


Happier

by capsiclewidow



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capsiclewidow/pseuds/capsiclewidow
Summary: She’d done worse things, she reasoned. She’d murdered innocent people, ruthlessly and carelessly. All for the glory of the Red Room and Mother Russia and Hydra. This would hardly be the worst thing she’d ever done.She was Natalia Romanova. The Red Death. The Slavic Shadow. The deadly Black Widow. She’d done terrible, unforgivable things. She was a monster and a ruthless killer. It’s what she did, who she was and who she’d always be.So yes, she could do this. She could hurt arguably the most kind, noble, good person who ever lived.She could break Steve Rogers’ heart.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 49
Kudos: 165





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey look at that, i'm still alive.
> 
> this wild ride started one day about a year ago when i was driving to work and happier by bastille came on the radio. i already loved the song but actually listened to the lyrics for the first time. the opening scene of this fic just kind of materialized in my brain and then suddenly it was a twenty thousand plus one shot. for the sake of easier reading i broke it down into chapters.
> 
> i do just want to point out one thing:
> 
> this fic is a bit darker than anything else i've ever written. it's not horrible or graphic, but natasha goes through some shit that comes back up from her past. however, i don't want to tag any warnings this early because it will spoil like, the entire thing. so please be aware of that, and once it gets to that part, if it's something that bothers you, please take it into consideration when deciding whether or not to continue reading. it's not a huge theme of the fic but it is the reason many of the events take place.
> 
> once that part is revealed i'll go into a bit more detail about when it'll come up again, i just really don't want to spoil the story from the beginning with a warning. if you really want to know beforehand, skip to the end notes of chapter 4.

_Lately, I've been, I've been thinking_  
_I want you to be happier, I want you to be happier_

Rain pattered lightly on the windows of the apartment. Natasha stared at it, watching the droplets form on the glass. They glowed gold, sparkling from the streetlights shining up from the street below.

It had been raining all night, which was about how long she’d laid there in bed, still and silent, watching them hit the window and slide down it. It wasn’t pouring, but it was hard enough to cause a steady rhythm that _should_ have been relaxing.

It had been for Steve, apparently, who had passed out almost immediately after he’d fallen into bed. He’d started with his back to her, but now he was curled around her with one arm wrapped possessively around her waist. He was completely oblivious to the long hours she stayed awake every night, staring at the ceiling or the wall or out the window. She’d fall asleep eventually, from pure exhaustion if nothing else. When she woke up, he’d either be back on his side or gone altogether; in the shower, on his way to work already, out for a run, or eating breakfast. That’s just how it was now.

They used to do all those things together. She’d wake up with his warm body plastered all over her, and they’d get up, go for a run and then get ready together, head to the tower with her clinging to him on the back of his motorcycle or him crunched into the tiny front seat of her Corvette. Sometimes they wouldn’t even get that far. Sometimes he stayed wrapped around her all day until they were both too hungry to think about anything else. Now she couldn’t even remember the last time they’d spent an entire day without avoiding each other for most of it.

It wasn’t his fault. He walked on eggshells around her, not hiding the fact that he was afraid anything might set her off, a comment or a wrongly timed kiss on the cheek or even his presence would cause her to shut down and give him the silent treatment.

They didn’t fight, not really. Maybe they should, not that there was anything to even fight about. He’d never done anything wrong. All he’d ever tried to do was be there for her. Protect her. Love her. It was ridiculous to get upset with someone just for caring.

Steve shifted in his sleep, his hand sliding to rest on her stomach, and Natasha tensed. She’d been trying to pretend he wasn’t there, that none of this was real. Trying to pretend she never let herself get into this fucking situation in the first place.

_Love is for children_.

She felt the pressure building deep in her chest, the tightness that crept up every time she thought about it (which was almost constantly now). She wished he was away, gone on a mission that she’d been left behind on. That rarely happened anymore, now that they worked more for the Avengers Initiative and Stark Industries with SHIELD being gone. If there was a problem that didn’t require the dramatics Iron Man or Thor or the Hulk (which was most of them, unless, like…aliens or something were involved), they were the ones that were called.

The unstoppable force that was Captain America and Black Widow. They could infiltrate and topple an entire organization with their eyes closed, plow through hoards of terrorists in the blink of an eye, fly though mission after mission without being detected or stopped. They worked much too seamlessly and much too efficiently to send anyone else, or send them out alone.

She’d waited, of course. Hoped Fury would send him out with Sam instead, or Tony, or even Clint. Anyone but her. And yet here they were, just like every other night, lying next to each other while he slept, naive to the fact that she spent night after night silently berating herself for being so goddamn selfish and cruel.

She’d done worse things, she reasoned. She’d murdered innocent people, ruthlessly and carelessly. Shot the daughter and grandson of an American senator in their sleep. Set fire to a hospital to take out a single politician. Blindly assassinated civilians that posed a threat to the desired order of the Nazi world. All for the glory of the Red Room and Mother Russia and Hydra. This would _hardly_ be the worst thing she’d ever done.

She was Natalia Romanova. The Red Death. The Slavic Shadow. The deadly Black Widow. She’d done terrible, unforgivable things. She was a monster and a ruthless killer. It’s what she did, who she was and who she’d always be.

So yes, she could do this. She could hurt arguably the most kind, noble, _good_ person who ever lived.

She could break Steve Rogers’ heart.

_Get up._

Natasha slid carefully out from beneath Steve and sat up, keeping her eyes focused on the window, the floor, the wall, the closet where the bag she’d packed two weeks ago was stashed. Anywhere but behind her. She turned and slid off the bed, the unforgiving cold from the hardwood sending a chill up her spine. She moved silently, stepping on the boards that didn’t creak, maneuvering herself to pull her bag out of the closet through the partially opened door that squeaked.

She’d gone to bed in a t-shirt and leggings, making it easy to slip on her jacket and combat boots, which were waiting for her by the front door. The backpack was stocked with as much cash as she could pull out of her savings account, a couple pistols, exactly three changes of clothes, and a burner only Clint had the number to. Liho’s collar and a few Ziploc bags of cat food. A small arsenal of weapons. One of Steve’s dog tags that she’d slipped off of the chain and stashed in a small pocket on the side.

_Selfish_.

She slipped the chain off of her neck, staring down at it. It looked odd, only one of the tags hanging from it, in her hand instead of hanging from her neck where it had been since he gave them to her months ago. She squeezed it in her hand, the metal pressing tightly against her palm, inflicting just enough pain to snap her out of it and turn back towards the bed.

He was still asleep; his hair ruffled, features relaxed and lips parted, long eyelashes fluttering against his skin while he dreamed. The tightness in her chest came back, worse than it ever had been, as she watched him. It nauseated her, spread through her entire body, making her knees weak and her hands shake. She set the bag down in the doorway, eyes never leaving him, and then stepped silently back across the room to stand in front of him. She set the chain in her hand down on the bedside table, right next to his cell phone. She tried not to think about the fact that it was the first thing he’d see in the morning when he woke up and reached for his phone to check his email and messages and possible mission briefings, like he did every morning.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, barely audible, barely more than a wisp of air escaping her lips. His face blurred and she blinked furiously.

This wasn’t happening. She was _not_ going to cry.

_You’re the Black Widow. Crying is for the weak, and you are not weak. Love is for children._

She took one last shuddering breath, her throat burning as she held back a sob, and turned away.

She made it as far as to the door of the bedroom.

Steve shifted again, a small, breathy noise escaping his lips. She stilled, waiting until he stopped moving.

“Nat?”

Every muscle in her body tensed, her heart stopping mid-beat. He inhaled sharply and the blankets rustled again. Natasha took a deep breath, relaxed her face, and turned around. He turned his head to see her, blinking sleepily then closing his eyes again.

“Hey.” She plastered on a soft smile to mask the panic raging through her. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“S’okay,” he slurred, yawning. He lay silently for a second, eyes shut. She thought she got lucky for a second, that he’d fallen back to sleep. She hadn’t. “W’time izzit?”

“I don’t know.” It came out harsher than she’d intended, and he let out a long, defeated breath. Her heart ached, a fresh wave of guilt passing through her.

Before she had a chance to talk herself out of it, to talk some damn _sense_ into herself, she retreated back into the room and stopped at the side of the bed. He reached for her and she gave in, letting him curl his warm fingers loosely around her wrist and pull her down to sit on the edge of the bed. He let her go but rolled back onto his side, slipping his arms around her waist.

“Sorry,” he muttered into her thigh. She swallowed thickly and allowed her hand to rest on his arm.

“For what?”

“I dunno.” He rubbed his nose against the fabric of her leggings. “Can’t sleep again?”

She hadn’t realized he’d noticed. Not that they ever talked about…well, anything. Not anymore.

“Just thirsty,” she lied. Her hand dropped from his arm to slide into his hair. She pushed her hands through the soft strands, her mind screaming at her to stop but her heart not letting her. Her eyes welled over again, his features becoming blurry. He was still half asleep, completely oblivious. He sighed contently at her fingers massaging his scalp, and turned his head farther into her palm.

After a few seconds that she let get entirely too long his eyes fluttered open halfway. He squinted at her, his mouth curving down just slightly.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Not her most convincing lie. He watched her for a few long seconds, and through the haze of sleepiness she could see more coherent thoughts forming in his eyes. Concern. Confusion. Sadness. He pulled one of his arms away from where it was wrapped around her and reached up, resting it on the side of her face to push her hair back behind her ear.

“No you’re not.” She bit down on her tongue, hard, one last attempt to keep the walls up. Despite her efforts, a tear fell from her wet eyelashes and dropped onto her cheek. He shifted his hand and slid his thumb across it to wipe it away. “We’ll be okay, love.”

Fuck. _Fuck_.

_Love is for children. Love is for_ fucking _children. Love is for-_

All sense went out the window into the rainy night and, before she let herself think, before she let herself be _sensible_ , she leaned down and pressed her lips softly to his. He was slow to respond, his grogginess slowing him down, but when he slid his hands farther into her hair and held her there she deepened it.

It turned hungry, passionate…desperate. Her other hand came to cup his face on both sides and she sobbed into his mouth. His fingers curled tighter into her hair in response, and his other hand, the one still at her waist, pulled her down even closer, fingertips digging into her skin as he held on. They hadn’t kissed like this - or touched, or talked, or been even remotely this emotionally or physically close - in weeks, and her body suddenly craved it. _Needed_ it.

_No. Stop._

She finally came up for air and caught his gaze. He gave her a smile, small and sleepy but still filled with so much hope that she felt her heart actually shattering in her chest. The guilt flooded back, consuming her, and she let another tear slip from her eyes and onto his nose.

“I love you,” she breathed, her lips ghosting across his as they moved with the words. He kissed her again, softer and sweeter this time, but it made her chest ache all the same.

“Love you too.” He let out a happy sigh, closing his eyes again. His breaths were slowing again. “Go get a drink and come back to bed. I miss you.”

“Okay.” She choked the word out, but he was already half asleep again and didn’t notice. She pulled her hands away from him and wiped the wetness from her cheek with the back of one of them.

_Go. Now_.

She needed to leave. If she didn’t now, she never would.

She was a monster. She was a ruthless killer. She was the Black Widow and she always would be. But pulling herself away from him, turning towards the door, and walking out of the room without a second look was still the hardest, most painful thing she’d ever done.


	2. Chapter 2

_When the morning comes_   
_When we see what we've become_   
_In the cold light of day we're a flame in the wind_   
_Not the fire that we've begun_

**TWO MONTHS AGO**

_“Cap, we have movement below us_.”

Steve heard footsteps behind him before he saw their owner and spun, smacking them clean in the face with his shield as they rounded the corner. There were three of them, all shouting in Russian. He disarmed the second, ramming the edge of the shield into his face and kicking the other, effectively taking them both out before they had a chance to react.

“ _On it,”_ Natasha replied in his ear. “ _Care to join me, Captain?”_

“Coming,” Steve replied, and took off down the dark corridor the three men had come from.

“ _Later._ ”

A chorus of groans followed. Steve felt himself flush, heat rising from his chest to the tips of his ears despite the small uptick of his lips.

“ _God, you guys are the fucking worst.”_

“ _Language, Stark_.”

“Focus,” Steve replied sternly. He found a staircase and leapt down it three steps at a time. “Romanoff, what’s your location?”

“ _Please don’t answer that,”_ Clint answered for her. Natasha snorted out a laugh.

“ _Basement,”_ she replied, instead of the obvious innuendo Steve knew she was probably dying to say. “ _And look, they’re coming out to greet me. How-“_ She grunted with a few kicks and punches, followed by three successive gunshots. “ _How nice._ ”

“Almost there _,_ ” Steve replied, jumping down another set of steps into the lower level of the facility.

“ _If you don’t…hurry…you’ll miss…miss the action_ ,” she panted between hits. “ _Wouldn’t want_ that _now,_ would _we Rogers?”_ she added, her voice lowering suggestively.

“ _Stark, where are we on getting them their own comms line?”_ Clint grumbled.

“ _Not close enough_.”

Steve rounded another corner, the sounds of fighting getting closer.

“ _It’s handled for now,”_ Natasha said, taking a breath. “ _But I think there’s more on the-_ “

She broke off abruptly with a strangled cry.

“Nat, you okay?” Steve said, worry jolting through him.

“ _Yeah, I’m…ahh, fuck…Steve, where are y-_ “

She was cut off again, this time by a burst of static. And then nothing.

“Natasha?” Nothing. Steve pumped his feet faster, thundering down the hall. “Natasha, come in!”

“ _What happened_?” Clint asked. “ _Rogers, what’s-“_

_“_ I don’t _know!_ Romanoff, _do you copy_?” Steve swung around another corner to see the results of the fight they’d just heard. There were at least ten men, dead or knocked out, all over the floor. Natasha was nowhere to be found. His heart thudded in his chest and he continued down the hall, leaping over the bodies. It split into three more directions, forward and off to both sides. There was no one, no indication of movement, no sounds. “Nat, _where are you?”_

“ _Rogers, what’s going on?”_ Clint repeated.

Steve whipped his head around, trying to find something, _anything_ to indicate what happened or where she’d gone. And then he saw it, a little grey box laying on the ground amidst the bodies. He sprinted back the way he’d come and bent down to pick it up. He turned it over in his hands, dead filling him when he realized what it was.

“Shit,” he breathed, worry coursing through him again.

“ _Steve!”_

“EMP,” he replied, his voice tight. “They knocked out her comms signal.”

“ _Who’s they?”_

“I don’t _know_ , Barton!” His voice shook, but he didn’t care. He dropped the device on the ground and sprinted back towards the intersection. “I don’t know where they went, I…”

He trailed off, glancing around helplessly. His heart thumped in his chest, nausea bubbling up from the pit of his stomach. _She can take care of herself_ , he reminded himself. After all, this was _her_ territory. Her home field advantage. She’d lead the investigation into this particular suspected cell of terrorists, using what the knew of past arms dealers and overall bad guys in Moscow to track this place down and connect the dots. _She’s okay_.

“ _JARVIS, can you track her?”_

“ _Negative, sir_ ,” the AI responded.

“Search the entire place,” Steve ordered, a little more harshly than he intended. “Every corner. Don’t stop until you find her.”

“ _I’ll do my best, Captain_.”

“ _There’s only so far they can go,”_ Tony added. _“This place is like, three stories and a basement. Only one way out that we’ve detected-“_

“That we’ve _detected!_ ” Steve snapped. He finally made a decision and turned right, moving farther into the facility. It seemed to go past the boundaries of the building’s footprint. “This place is a labyrinth, they could be anywhere!”

“ _We’ll find her, Steve,”_ Clint assured him, but Steve could still hear the concern in his tone. _“If she doesn’t kick their asses first_.”

_She’s okay. She can take care of herself. She’s okay._

He repeated it over and over in his head as he stormed down the hallway, smashing open every door he came across. He hit a dead end and retreated back to the intersection, heading straight past the previous fight and down the second hall. More of the same. He ran back once more and turned left, finding more and more of _absolutely nothing_. Nothing but more halls branching out into an endless maze of offices and labs and weapons storage and sleeping quarters.

Finally he burst through a door at the end of yet another long hall and it opened up to a larger, more open area. Some sort of common room, it looked like. Off to one side was a kitchen and cafeteria, another led to various training rooms. None of it looked like it had been utilized or lived in in years. He went back to the main area and took a chance on another door. This led to a shorter corridor, doors lining the walls.

“ _I was unable to locate Agent Romanoff_ ,” JARVIS began, _“but I have begun to analyze some of the intel Mr. Stark collected from the facility’s computer system._ ”

“ _And?_ ” Tony asked.

“ _It seems as if this is a base of some kind for an underground terrorist organization_.”

“ _Tell me something I don’t know, J. Anything useful?_ ”

Steve pushed open a door to find a large room full of beds. Twin sized, sterile white sheets and thin blankets thrown haphazardly onto them. Wire frames. A thick coat of dust covering every surface. There were at least a couple dozen, maybe three.

“ _There are large gaps in information_ ,” JARVIS continued in Steve’s ear as he stepped farther into the room. “ _But data goes back several decades. Translated from paper documents beginning around the early stages of the Cold War._ ”

“Does it say who owns it?” Steve asked. His eyes landed on one of the beds, attention caught by something hanging off of the rusted metal frame. Were those…?

“ _It’s unclear, but if I had to guess at this point, I would say the sources indicate this facility had ties to the KGB.”_

Steve’s blood ran cold in his veins and he froze, every muscle in his body becoming useless, as he stared at the handcuffs hanging from the bed.

He’d asked Natasha about the scar on her wrist once, the little horizontal one on the inside of it that was hard to see unless you were close enough to notice it. It was older than the rest, she’d told him. Not caused by any injury or physical trauma. No, she’d explained in a soft voice with empty eyes, it was from metal digging into the same spot, every single night for years.

_It’s a lot harder to kill your competition when you’re handcuffed to the bed._

“ _Fuck_ ,” Clint breathed over the line.

“ _What?”_ No one answered Tony.

“This isn’t a bunker,” Steve choked out finally. “It’s-“

The Red Room.

“ _We need to fucking find her._ Now.”

Clint was panicking. Steve could hear it in his voice. Any ordinary terrorist cell? She could cut through waves of thugs like a warm knife through butter. She could take down an entire organization in the blink of an eye before they even knew what was coming. They couldn’t beat her.

But these people? They trained her. They _made_ her. They were probably the only ones on the planet who _could_ beat her.

Steve felt dizzy. He dragged his eyes away from the bed, forcing his thoughts to concentrate on finding Natasha and _only_ on finding her. Not whether she’d slept here, whether she was tortured and beaten here, whether she’d killed here.

“ _JARVIS. Find her._ ”

_“I’ve scanned the facility, sir. If they’re still here, they are untraceable.”_

_“God dammit.”_ Clint muttered. His voice shook. “ _She knew it. She_ knew _where we were. She…why didn’t she…god dammit!”_

_“We need to regroup,_ ” Tony reasoned. “ _The situation is controlled, we need to-_ “

“ _What, just_ leave _her here!?”_

“ _That’s not what I’m saying, but if she’s not here, why are we?”_

_“We don’t_ know _if she’s still here!”_

This was Steve’s call. He needed to consider the situation, figure out tactfully what their next move was. He needed to tell them what to do.

Instead, he listened to Tony and Clint argue in his ear. He turned around and left the room, staring numbly down the hall. Everything she’d ever told him, every time she’d opened up and let him into her past, her childhood…it all had context now. The training, the torture, the abuse. The things she’d locked away after breaking out of their conditioning, way back when Clint had brought her to SHIELD, that she hadn’t revisited until that night, the one they spent in his bed and she’d shared it all with him, tears streaming silently down her face, his arms wrapped around her as she let him into that part of her life. And she’d come back willingly, quietly, without warning them what they were walking into.

It made sense now, how quiet she’d been on the jet while they flew to Moscow. He thought she was just apprehensive returning to Russia after so many years.

He felt like an idiot. Like he’d betrayed her. Like he should have made the call to approach this differently.

Like he should have fucking known.


	3. Chapter 3

_Every argument, every word we can't take back_   
_'Cause with the all that has happened_   
_I think that we both know the way that the story ends_

A deafening crack of thunder jolted Clint from his sleep, loud enough for him to actually hear. He bolted upright, instinctively vaulting himself over the side of the bed to swipe the pistol from where it was stashed underneath the bedside table. In the process he knocked into it, the force sending his phone toppling onto the floor.

Once the moment passed and the threat had dissipated, he grunted sleepily, dropping the gun and picking up his phone instead. A small crack had formed on it, branching out from the corner across the screen.

“Dammit.”

The screen lit up and he squinted at it. It was nearing six in the morning. He flopped back down onto the pillow, letting it fall onto the mattress next to him as he closed his eyes. Lucky, who had been lying next to him and watching the entire scene unimpressed, licked the side of his face.

Lightning flashed, red lighting up the back of his eyelids, and the dog flinched a few seconds later. He let out an irritated sigh. It had taken him forever to fall asleep in the first place, and now that he was awake, his brain wouldn’t settle back down. He sat up again, throwing the blanket off of him and letting it slide halfway onto the floor. His hearing aids had fallen when he hit the table, so he retrieved them and stood up, swearing under his breath when his feet hit the cold hardwood.

Clint shuffled out of his room and downstairs to the kitchen, Lucky following close behind him. With his eyes still half closed and the loft dark, he turned the corner and immediately ran into something. He swore again, not even caring what he’d smashed his foot into and rounding the island to the coffee pot, dropping his broken phone on the counter. The pot was heavier than he expected, and upon further inspection, he realized it was half full from last night.

Probably why he couldn’t sleep, when he thought about it.

He dumped its contents in the sink, rinsed it enough to be almost acceptable for reuse, and fumbled around in the cabinet for a new filter and the canister of ground coffee. While it brewed he leaned against the island counter and closed his eyes again.

He’d almost drifted off again right where he stood, but the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He jumped and spun around, smashing his arm on the edge of the counter in the process. Natasha was there, on the other side of the island, eyes glittering in the dim light while watching him carefully.

“Jesus, Nat.” Clint rubbed his arm where it had hit the countertop. He picked up his hearing aids and turned them on before shoving them in his ears. “Warn a guy when you break into his apartment in the middle of the night.”

“Sorry.” She pulled herself up onto one of the barstools as he flipped on the light on over the kitchen sink, her hands settling in her lap. Her cat, ignoring Lucky’s curious sniffing, leapt up onto the counter and sat, staring at him unblinkingly. “Can I stay here for a few days?”

“Trouble in paradise?” he drawled sarcastically. Something flashed through her eyes. Now that she was closer, he noticed they were glazed over, red-rimmed with obvious bags underneath them. He frowned, turning to look at her properly. “Wait, really?”

“I…” Natasha averted her gaze, swallowing hard. She blinked a few times. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“I swear to god, I’ll put an arrow right through his star spangled d-“

“I left.”

Clint watched her for a second. She still wasn’t looking at him, instead staring blankly down at the cluttered countertop.

“Why?”

“Do we really need to-“

“Yes.” She glanced up only to glare at him. He sighed and rounded the island to stand in front of her. “He didn’t do anything?”

“No.”

“Did you?”

“Clint-“

“Then why-“

“Stop!” She stared at him, her gaze desperate despite the scowl on her face. Her bottom lip quivered as she desperately held back the tears glazing over her eyes. “Please, I just…I need to know it’s okay for me to stay here.”

Clint reached for her and she leaned into him, burying her face against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair.

“Of course you can. You know that.”

“Thanks,” she said, voice muffled against his t-shirt.

They stayed like that for several minutes, Clint standing next to the stool she was sitting on while her silent tears wet his t-shirt. It unnerved him, seeing her like this. He could count the amount of times he’d seen her cry on…well, exactly one hand: after they’d first met while she was trying to break the Red Room’s drug and torture-induced conditioning, once each when Coulson and Fury had both (supposedly) died, once after their disaster of a mission to Moscow a couple months ago, and now.

“Tasha-“

“I _don’t_ want to talk about it,” she insisted.

“I know. And I won’t make you. But I’m not the one you need to talk to.”

Natasha pulled away from him abruptly, wiping her cheeks on the back of her hand.

“And tell him _what?_ ”

“Uh, why you left in the middle of the night, for starters.”

Clint returned to the coffee pot, pulling two mugs out of the cabinet. He poured one for each of them, setting hers in front of her and taking a long gulp of his own. It burned his mouth and all the way down his throat.

“I think he’ll get the message,” she replied bitterly, ignoring her cup.

“Yeah, he will. And he’s going to be a mess.”

“Clint, stop-“

“I mean it, Nat. You two…” He sighed at the uncomfortable look on her face. “He fucking _loves_ you. A lot.”

“I know.”

“And you love him.”

“Clint-“

“You do. And throwing it all away because you had one stupid fight-“

“It wasn’t a stupid fight.” She let out a frustrated sigh. “We’ve barely talked, or…or anything. In weeks. It’s not like he’s going to be surprised.”

“Weeks? Tasha.” Clint stepped forward and set his cup on the counter in front of him. “You guys have been together for, what…a year?”

“Almost two,” she corrected him in a small voice.

“So what’s a few weeks?”

“It’s not just that. I told you, I don’t wanna talk about this.” She turned and slid off her chair, crossing the open room to the couch, closely followed by both a happy dog and and indignant cat. He noticed a duffel bag sitting next to it as she fell back onto it. “Just a few days until I figure out what to do next.”

“And then what? You just…leave?”

“Yes.”

Clint frowned after her and opened his mouth to argue, but his phone suddenly rang loudly from the counter. He looked down at it. It was Steve.

“Don’t answer that.” Clint glanced back over at her. She was watching him with wide eyes. “I know it’s him.”

“What, you don’t think I get phone calls?”

“At six in the morning?” She had a point. “Please. Just…don’t.”

“He’s probably worried out of his mind.”

“I know.”

“So, what? You leave in the middle of the night, run off to god knows where, abandon him and the team, and never speak to him again?”

“That’s the plan, yes,” she replied irritably.

“It’s a terrible plan.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

She pulled her legs up onto the couch, knees in front of her, and rested her forehead on them. Lucky hopped up next to her, wiggling his head to rest on her lap between her stomach and thighs. Liho watched them both from the floor, offended. They were silent until the phone rang again immediately following the first time.

“Why isn’t he calling you?” Clint asked, once the second call went unanswered.

“I disconnected my service.”

Clint let out an exasperated sigh, draining the rest of his coffee in two gulps. He turned to pour himself another cup, and as soon as he did, his phone rang a third time.

“I can’t just ignore him, Tash.” He turned to her again. She picked her head up, leaning it back against he couch as she hugged her legs in front of her.

“Just don’t tell him I’m here,” she replied softly. “ _Please_.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. He set his mug down on the counter and picked up the phone. “Mornin’, Cap. I don’t take calls until after ten.”

“Have you talked to Nat?” Steve asked, ignoring his comment. His voice shook. “She’s gone, and I…I tried to call her, but it’s disconnected, and I think…I think she…”

“She hasn’t called me.”

It wasn’t _technically_ a lie, right? Steve was silent, with the exception of his quick, panicked breaths.

“She’s there, isn’t she?” Clint gritted his teeth, glaring at Natasha. She was staring up at the ceiling, unnaturally still. “Clint, please… _please_ , just…let me talk to her.”

“She’s not here.”

“You’re lying.” He sucked in a ragged breath. “What did she…did she tell you…?”

“No.” Steve was quiet again. Clint let out a long sigh. “I’m sorry, Cap. I…I don’t know what to say.”

“I know. I know you can’t. I just…I don’t-” His voice cracked. “She…she was crying last night, I thought it was…but I woke up and she was gone and the cat’s gone and…and I don’t…I don’t know why…”

He trailed off and Clint heard him trying to stifle a sob. Guilt and discomfort bubbled up in the pit of his stomach, hearing Steve - _Captain America,_ for christ’s sake - physically unable to speak. Natasha was his best friend - more than that really, more than a sister - and he’d always stand behind her no matter what. But this…this was hard.

“I’m…I’m sorry. I won’t bother you-“

“You’re not,” Clint assured him.

“She’s okay?”

“Well, no.” Steve sighed shakily. “But…yeah.”

“Okay.” He took a few shuddering breaths. “Okay. Just. Can you…can you tell her…that…that I-“

“That you love her and she should go back home and talk to you about this?” Natasha lifted her head and shot him a dirty look.

“Y-yeah.”

“I already did. But I will again. Repeatedly.”

“Thanks.”

He was silent for a few more seconds and then hung up without another word. Clint set his phone back down on the counter and met Natasha’s gaze.

“That sucked.”

“Sorry.”

“For the record, I think you’re fucking this up. Big time.”

“Noted,” she muttered bitterly.

“And I’d like to reiterate that you _should_ go back home and talk to him about this.”

“ _Clint_ -“

“He’s a fucking _mess._ ” Natasha didn’t respond to that, just took a ragged breath, holding back a sob. Clint sighed and crossed the room, shooing Lucky off of the couch so he could take his spot next to her. “But I also know that…there’s clearly something you’re not telling me and…” He trailed off, reaching out to rest his hand gently on her arm. “And I love you and I’m here for you. Or whatever.” She glanced over at him with red, wet eyes, eyebrow slightly raised. “Sorry. Honestly I’m really fucking tired and I don’t know what to say to make you feel better. You showing up a blubbering mess isn’t something I’ve ever had to deal with before.”

“I’m not _blubbering_ ,” she grumbled defensively. He lifted his arm to let her fall into his side. She did, curling into him and burying her face in the crook of his neck.

“I mean, you are a little.” She ignored him, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. “Are you sure about this?”

“No.”

He adjusted his head to rest it against the top of hers, placing a kiss to her hair.

“Okay.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> previously mentioned warning applies to this chapter.
> 
> russian translations at the end.

_Then only for a minute_  
I want to change my mind  
'Cause this just don't feel right to me

**TWO MONTHS AGO**

“ _Natalia. Dobroye utro._ ”

Natasha’s eyes fluttered as she tried to open them. Her entire body ached - her abdomen in particular, like she’d taken an intense beating - and she was uncomfortably sluggish. Her head was _killing_ her, and it pounded as she tried to piece together what was happening. The last thing she remembered was going to bed the night before, her arms curled around Steve while Liho made herself comfortable on his stomach.

Wait, that wasn’t right. It was all a bit hazy. They’d been in Russia for a few days, staking out their target. She, Steve, and Clint had been living out of a tiny, inconspicuous hotel room in Moscow down the street from an old abandoned apartment building these terrorists had apparently be working out of.

At least, that’s what the others thought.

She’d kept quiet, going about this as she would any other mission. She’d withheld the fact that she already knew the boarded up building was a front for a terrorist organization, that she was all too familiar with the rooms behind the crumbling brick facade. That she already knew how to get in: through the indoor stairs to the basement or, if they wanted to be less obvious, through the tunnel that ran underneath the street and into the ballet studio that had been turned into a deli sometime in the last decade.

She blinked furiously, finding herself staring down at a concrete floor. It was cold and unforgiving on her knees, and she slowly realized that was because her knee guards were gone, as well as all of her gear, leaving her in just her suit.

The hotel…that wasn’t the last thing she remembered.

“ _Stark, where are we on getting them their on comms line?”_

“ _Not close enough_.”

_Natasha punched a thug that had tried to grab her from behind, twisting her body so quickly he didn’t have time to react. Then she whipped her head around, fists poised and ready, letting out a long, panting breath before dropping them._

“ _It’s handled for now,”_ _she breathed into her comms line._ “ _But I think there’s more on the-_ “

_Pain seared through her shoulder and she cried out, the remainder of her sentence lost in her throat. What the hell…_?

_“Nat, you okay?” came Steve’s worried voice._

_Natasha dropped down to her knees, her other hand coming up to feel at her bicep, at the source. She felt around, her eyes screwed shut against the pain, and finally felt something solid and cold sticking out of her arm. She pulled it out gingerly and finally forced her eyes open to glance down on it. It was some kind of dart, tiny, almost like a needle._

“ _Yeah, I’m…” She hissed as the burning in her arm spread through her shoulder and up her neck. Her head started pounding and her vision went cloudy. “Fuck…” she mumbled. “Steve, where are you?”_

_He didn’t answer. She heard footsteps approaching as she sat back on her heels when the nausea overcame her. “St…Steve, they…they hit…me with…something…”_

_“I don’t think he can hear you.”_

_The voice was in Russian, and it sent a chill through her. Her head felt like it had a lead weight in it, but she lifted it, whining with the effort and the fresh wave of dizziness that came over her when she did._

“I said, good _morning_ , Natalia.”

Cold hands grabbed her by her chin and forced her face upwards. Ivan sneered at her.

“I thought I killed you,” she spat out in Russian, her voice coming out low and raspy. She tried to reach over and push away the arm of the man with his fingers still holding her face upright, but found her arms bound and shackled behind her. Instead she shoved him hard with her shoulder, the cuffs on her wrist digging sharply into her skin. He stumbled backwards, swearing under his breath.

“You tried.” He began pacing. “And clearly, you failed.”

“What the hell do you want?” she replied harshly.

“I want my Black Widow back, of course.” He stopped and shot a sickening smile over at her. “The Red Room program has been in shambles for years, thanks to you.” She grinned, satisfied at the anger that flashed through his eyes. She and Clint had personally made sure the Red Room was destroyed from the top down, about a year after she joined SHIELD. It was off the books and Fury decided to look the other way. “You’re going to help me fix what you broke.”

Natasha laughed, and he scowled at her. “You can’t _possibly_ think I would do that.”

“Of course I don’t. Not willingly.” Ivan just shrugged. “But I _do_ think you remember how… _convincing_ I can be.”

“You underestimate me,” she hissed, ignoring the fear prickling in the pit of her stomach. She was a complete and utter mess after she left them for good. The withdrawals and side effects of whatever drugs and torture methods they’d been forcing on her for years almost killed her.

“I don’t. I know what you’re capable of, _malen'kiy pauk_.”

She flinched at his pet name for her.

“And what then?” she seethed. “You brainwash me back into being your… _asset_ again, and then-?”

“Killing Captain America will be your first mission,” Ivan cut in bluntly. Natasha swallowed thickly, but recovered before he noticed. The corner of her mouth ticked upwards.

“I think you underestimate him, too.”

“Oh no. Trust me, I know exactly how easy it will be.” He took a few steps towards her. “He would never lay a finger on you.” Natasha didn’t know what to say to that…because he was right. Steve would never hurt her, probably wouldn’t even try to fight her. She could slit his throat before he even realized she was compromised. “Struck a nerve, have I?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she spat. Ivan chuckled, reaching out to stroke the side of her face with the back of his cold, clammy hand. She jerked away from him, pulling against her restraints.

“Now who’s underestimating who?” He dropped his hand and turned, walking away from her again. “Falling in love…you have disappointed me again, Natalia. You are better than this.”

“I don’t give a shit about what you think of me.”

Ivan spun around on his heel.

“I thought you learned your lesson last time.”

The retort at the tip of her tongue faded. When they’d found out about the relationship she and James had been carrying on for months, they’d dragged him into the chair and destroyed his brain until he didn’t even recognize her. They’d erased everything about her until the only thing left was his orders: to kill her. It was the only time (until he showed up in DC) that he’d ever failed to complete a mission.

“Apparently not.”

Ivan’s jaw tightened angrily. He swiftly approached her again and swung his fist at her. It connected painfully with her jaw and she fell, the metal shackles on her wrists biting painfully into her skin. She grunted, the drugs in her system dizzying her as she straightened herself again. She spit out the blood that pooled in her cheek, and he grabbed her chin to force him to look him directly in the eye. She just smirked at him.

“Your punishment is much more severe this time, _malen'kiy pau_ k,” he hissed, so close to her that his foul breath was warm against her nose.

“And you think killing Steve Rogers will be enough?” she replied evenly. His fingers dug harder into her skin. “I won’t know what I’m doing. It won’t _teach_ me anything.”

“You’ve already been punished.” He shoved her face away and let it go, then turned his back to her. “It’s a shame, really. We had a great opportunity…the first replication of Erksine’s Super Soldier serum.” He sighed and shook his head.

And then it hit her. _The baby._

Natasha’s blood turned to ice in her veins. There was no way they knew. _No way._ Not a single soul did, no one but her. She hadn’t even left the damn stick in the trash, had destroyed it and shoved it into a random dumpster in Queens before getting a cab back to Steve’s apartment in Brooklyn.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she hissed, her voice shaking.

“You know _exactly_ what I’m talking about.”

“What did you do?” she whispered, cutting him off. He just stared at her with that sick, satisfied smile on her face. He was lying, trying to mess with her mind. That’s what he did. But the way her body shook, the way her stomach throbbed, the way it convulsed as a fresh wave of nausea rushed over her…she knew he was telling the truth. “What the _fuck did you do!?_ ”

“ _I_ did nothing,” he replied matter-of-factly. “The drugs…they cause stress on the body. As I said: a shame. But I suppose it’s better this way.”

“You’re lying,” Natasha breathed. Ivan just let out a huff and turned to one of his men standing behind him.

“Get her in the chair,” he ordered, before glancing back at her.

Ivan’s men sprang into action, coming behind her and unlocking the shackles that held her to the wall. Everything in her told her to fight, to use the split second before they got a good hold on her to get the upper hand, but she couldn’t. All she could do was feel the pain radiating from her lower abdomen, and the weakness in her knees as they pulled her upright and dragged her across the room.

“If it makes you feel better, you’ll probably forget in a minute.”

“He’ll kill you for this,” she said, barely a whisper, as they shoved her backwards, forcing her to sit. It was _the_ chair, the one they used to keep her and James in line, to erase their minds and replace them with whatever fit their needs that day. To keep them compliant. He was going to do the same thing to her that Hydra did to James…turn her back into their weapon, and send her after Steve.

She should have told him about the baby. She shouldn’t even have been on this mission. She shouldn’t have gone down into that basement alone. She shouldn’t have kept from Steve where they were in the first place.

This was her fault.

“I don’t doubt he’ll try,” Ivan replied with a shrug. The restraints clasped over her wrists and ankles, and she was trapped again. She opened her mouth to reply, but one of his thugs shoved a mouth guard into it before she could, then lowered the head pieces to hover over either side of her face. “If you don’t kill him first, of course.”

The machine turned on and her vision went white. She screamed, the sound muffled by the piece of rubber in her mouth. Her mind went blank, unable to concentrate on anything besides the excruciating pain radiating through her.

_Focus_.

The thought drifted through the haze. She’d done this before, she’d _fought_ it before. She tried to ground herself, fighting against the pulsing electricity. She cried out again, a mix of frustration and the static in her brain.

_Steve_.

His face flickered into her mind, his eyes bright and his smile wide. She threw every once of energy she had in fighting the dark haze attempting to take over and forced herself to see nothing but him, nothing but blue eyes staring back at her.

It felt endless, but finally the machine stopped, and everything was silent. Her head was _pounding_ , but she took a few labored breaths and tried to focus again.

_My name is Natasha Romanoff. I’m an Avenger._

She kept her eyes squeezed shut, desperately trying to center herself.

_Steve. He’s going to come for me._

She was slipping, her mind spiraling into a pit of turmoil.

_I’m in the Red Room. They found me._

She choked out an involuntary sob, feeling a tear escape down the side of her face. The mouth guard was taken out and she licked her dry lips.

“Natalia?”

_Ivan_.

“Go…fuck yourself,” she panted.

“Do it again.”

The rubber was shoved back into her mouth and she was thrown into agony once again. She let out a strangled cry as the machine took over her mind once more.

This time was harder. She tried to picture Steve’s face again, tried to remember what his arms felt like around her, what his lips felt like against hers. But he was fading, right before her eyes. She was losing.

Finally, everything else faded too, and the world went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRANSLATIONS  
>  _Dobroye utro_ \- good morning  
>  _malen'kiy pauk_ \- little spider
> 
> so now that it's out there, the warning for mention of miscarriage applies for the rest of the fic. it's mentioned a few more times, but mostly just with natasha dealing with it and it's discussed a bit more at length towards the end. i apologize for not disclosing it before now because i know that can be a sensitive topic to some, i just really didn't want to spoil too soon.


	5. Chapter 5

_I want to raise your spirits_   
_I want to see you smile but_   
_Know that means I'll have to leave_

Something smacked Clint in the face and he awoke with a gasp, spitting out cat hair. He lifted his head and, sure enough, Liho was right next to his face, whipping her tail back and forth violently.

“Ugh. Move,” he grumbled, pushing her away. She just rolled onto her back and stared at him, letting out a single squeak of a meow.

“That was rude.”

He glanced past the cat at Natasha, who was sitting up in bed next to him. She reached down and absentmindedly rubbed Liho’s belly, to which the cat closed her eyes and started purring.

“She was trying to suffocate me.”

“I forgot, my cat has a personal vendetta against you,” she replied sarcastically.

Clint let his head flop back onto his pillow. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. They’d been watching some late night tv show when he’d passed out.

“What time is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you slept at all?” Natasha just sighed. “You have to sleep eventually, you know.”

“I do sleep.”

“Yeah, when you’re so exhausted you pass out.”

She ignored that, keeping her eyes on the book in her lap. It had been just over a week and he’d barely seen her eat or sleep or do anything but read or watch television or stare blankly at any given inanimate object. He’d forced her to go with him to the gym once, but she’d barely spoken a word the entire time they were there, refused to actually do anything, and turned down the offer every other time since then.

“Come on. You can’t just mope around and-“

“I’m not _moping_.” She lowered her voice. “And if you want me to leave, just tell me.”

“Jesus, Tasha, if course I don’t.” He sat up this time and turned to face her. Her eyes were still staring down at her book but they weren’t moving. “You want to know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think if you really wanted to leave you wouldn’t still be here.” Her eyes flitted towards him but she still avoided his gaze. “When are you gonna tell me what happened?”

“ _Clint_.“

“I’m not forcing you,” he continued. “You know that. But…I’ve never seen you like this. And if you left, like you said you were going to, you’d be alone. And I think you know that would be worse.”

She swallowed hard, but didn’t say anything. She finally averted her gaze, but it fell on Liho, who was still laying on her back against her leg. She ran her fingers through her fur a few times, stalling. Clint could see the panic and hesitation in her eyes, could recognize her trying to shut herself down.

“I was pregnant,” she said, so softly it was more like a breath.

Her words didn’t register. That wasn’t possible _._ He _knew_ it wasn’t possible.

“You… _what?_ ”

“I found out a few weeks before we went to Moscow. I don’t know how they knew, but they did. I think they were watching me.” She paused, finally glancing over at him with glazed eyes and giving him a halfhearted shrug. “Apparently whatever they drugged me with didn’t take that into consideration.”

It took a second for that to sink in, and when it did, Clint saw red. After all those bastards did to her, what they took from her? And now _this?_

It all made sense now. She had been a wreck after they found her, but they all attributed it to whatever they did to her brain before they’d broke in and ripped her out of it. And, now that he thought about it, something _had_ been a little off with her since they’d gotten back from Moscow…but she’d also been drugged, captured, and tortured. That’s not something the average person bounced back from quickly.

Natasha wasn’t the average person. He should have noticed. _Idiot_.

“Clint,” she said softly, and his eyes snapped back to hers. They were wet and watching him carefully. “Please say something.”

“You didn’t tell Rogers, did you?”

“Of course not.” Her gaze went back to her hands, which were now fiddling with the corner of her closed book. “He would have been devastated.”

“You mean like he is now?” He expected a glare, but all she did was squeeze her eyes shut, letting a tear fall and slide down her cheek. “Hey, I’m…come here.“ He reached over and pulled her over, finally upsetting Liho enough that she bolted off the bed. Natasha curled into him, burying her face into the crook of his neck. He held her tight, rubbing his hand gently up and down her arm.

“It’s my fault,” she muttered after a few long minutes, muffled against his skin. He pulled back abruptly and lifted her chin to make her look at him.

“It is _absolutely_ not your fault, Tasha.”

“He didn’t know. I was so fucking scared…and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. If I had, there’s no way he would have let me even go with you, let alone go down there myself.”

“Nat, come on-“

“They were going to make me kill him, Clint,” she continued, her words stumbling over each other as they came faster and faster. “They killed his kid and then were going to make me kill him. I can’t-“ she broke off, her voice cracking, and took a few shaky breaths. “I can’t subject him to that. He doesn’t deserve it. I told him that at the beginning, and he told me he didn’t care, but-“

“Natasha-“

“They were just going to let me go, to pretend like everything was fine until I got the chance to kill him. And I knew-” She swallowed thickly. “I knew exactly how I would do it.”

“Tasha, listen to me.” He cupped her face and wiped away a stray tear with his thumb. “I understand. You know I do. But-“ he sighed. “I’m not the one you need to be telling all of this.”

She suddenly pulled away from him, grabbing her book and the pillow she’d been leaning against and storming out of his room and downstairs. “Clearly.”

“Nat, come on,” he called after her, but she ignored him. He let out a frustrated sigh but still decided to give her some time.

As expected, Clint woke up alone the next morning. He dressed quickly, already late for a mandatory Avengers meeting - he wondered if they would buy the _didn’t hear my alarm_ excuse this time - and when he got downstairs to find his boots, he found Natasha on the couch. She was wrapped in a blanket with Lucky curled up at her feet and Liho on her lap, facing away from him.

“Did you sleep?”

“No.”

He turned towards the door, irritated at her even when he knew he shouldn’t be, but paused.

“You’re still gonna be here when I get back…right?”

“Yeah.”

He glanced back at her briefly, but she hadn’t moved.

“Okay. I’ll…see you later.”

She didn’t answer, and he had a sudden urge to skip this meeting altogether, find out where they’d locked up the asshole who did this to her, and kill him himself.

He didn’t, and wandered into the conference room at Avengers Tower fifteen minutes late, finding only Tony and Bruce there.

“Did they not teach you how to tell time at circus camp?”

“Sorry. Couldn’t hear my alarm.” He was right. They didn’t buy it. Tony just rolled his eyes.

“Well at least you’re not the only one. Who wants to call Rogers and Romanoff and tell them to get dressed and get their asses over here?”

Clint just gaped at him. _He didn’t know._

Although, he supposed he probably wouldn’t. They hadn’t actually all been together since Natasha showed up at his apartment last week, and he didn’t think Steve would have told anyone, let alone Tony Stark. Thankfully, before either of them noticed his hesitation, Steve brushed past him and took a seat without uttering a word to any of them.

He looked like shit.

He’d still combed his hair and put on a clean t-shirt and pair of jeans, but he clearly hadn’t shaved in several days, and based on the redness of his eyes, he hadn’t slept in at least that long either. He caught Clint’s gaze and a mix of anger and betrayal flashed through his eyes before they softened into something more desperate.

“Jesus, you in the middle of a bender or something?” Tony quipped.

“Can we just get this over with?” Steve snapped back.

“Well, Captain…Not-So-Obvious-“ He paused just long enough to smirk at his own joke. Steve wasn’t amused. “You’re the boss, remember?”

“Tony…” Clint braved a careful glance over at Steve while he took a seat across from him. “You said Jarvis finished piecing together the intel we got from that bunker in Turkey, right? Can you just-“

“Fine. Where the hell’s Red?” Steve tensed, his knuckles going white.

“Stark…” Clint warned, but he ignored him.

“I mean, if anything was going to make _you_ late, I assumed it was-“

Steve suddenly flew out of his chair and turned, leaving out of the same door he’d just come in through. Bruce and Tony both stared after him, dumbfounded.

“Jesus, they break up or something?” Tony grumbled.

“Yeah.”

Bruce’s head snapped up from the tablet he’d been scrolling on and glanced over at him, dumbfounded. Tony just froze, horror washing over his features as he stared in the direction Steve had gone.

“ _Shhhit_ …” he breathed.

“Are you serious?” Bruce asked softly. Clint sighed.

“Yeah. She’s been staying with me since last week.” He stood from his chair. “Can we, like…postpone this-“

“Yes. Please. Absolutely,” Tony said quickly.

Clint hurried out of the room and followed Steve. He found him downstairs in the locker room, sitting on a bench with his back to him, elbows on his knees and face buried in his hands. There was a fist-sized dent in one of the metal doors of the locker bay in front of him.

“Sorry,” Steve mumbled when he heard Clint enter the room. “I don’t know why I-“

“Yes you do.” Clint crossed the room and sat on the bench opposite him. “Since I know you wanna ask, she’s still staying with me.”

Steve finally glanced up at him, eyes glassy and bloodshot. “Thanks.”

“I take it you haven’t slept either?”

“That obvious, huh?” He shook his head and dropped his gaze back to the floor. Clint just watched him, a helpless ache radiating through his chest. “I don’t know what I did, Clint,” he added softly, his voice shaking. “I thought…I thought she’d be back by now.”

“I thought so too,” Clint replied with a sigh. “I’ve been trying. I really have.”

“I know.”

He had to tell him. Natasha would be _furious_ , but Steve had to know. If _he_ couldn’t get through to her, the only person who could was sitting in front of him, miserable and a breath away from sobbing.

“Okay, look-“ He paused and let out a long breath, already regretting the words about to come out of his mouth. This had a _very_ high chance of backfiring. “She’s going to kill me, but I don’t know what else to do.“ Steve lifted his eyes again, a concerned crease forming between his brows. “She was pregnant when we went to Moscow a couple months ago.”

Steve sat up slowly, his frown deepening. Fresh tears glazed over his eyes as he stared at him.

“ _What?_ ” he breathed, no louder than an exhale.

“They found out and…the drugs they gave her…” Clint hesitated at the horrified, devastated look on Steve’s face. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, but he clearly didn’t need to. “She blames herself.”

“She…” He trailed off, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in his hands again. “ _Fuck_.”

“You have _got_ to talk to her. She’s not listening to me.”

“I can’t.” His voice broke, muffled against his palms. “I can’t go after her, Clint. She’ll run. She’ll-“

“No, she won’t.” Clint sighed. “Trust me. If she was going to run, she’d be long gone by now.”

Steve lifted his eyes again, not meeting his gaze, blinking back the tears that had started gathering in them as he considered what Clint said. Finally he let out a long, shuddering breath.

“I always wondered…you know?” He paused, shaking his head. “I was always…afraid. That she’d leave. She always said…she didn’t think she was… _good_ enough. But I never thought…”

“Talk to her.” Steve met Clint’s eyes and nodded, swallowing thickly. “She loves you. She’ll listen.”


	6. Chapter 6

_When the evening falls_   
_And I'm left there with my thoughts_   
_And the image of you being with someone else_   
_Well, that's eating me up inside_

**TWO MONTHS AGO**

“ _Place looks empty._ ”

“Yeah,” Steve muttered into his comm line. He glanced around, taking in his surroundings, looking for anything they might have missed.

The intel Jarvis collected from the facility two days ago had led them in circles, and they’d burst into three other similar places finding exactly nothing except for a few old files. This location was a long shot, but he was so desperate at this point that he would go door to door combing every inch of Russia if it meant finding Natasha.

“Jarvis, anything?”

“ _Still scanning, Captain._ ”

“ _This place looks like another bust,”_ Clint added bitterly.

“Just keep looking.”

It came out harsher than he’d intended. It had only been two days, but he was at the end of his rope. He hadn’t slept, had barely eaten, and had spent every hour at the tower combing through file after file, over and over again, trying to figure out where they would have gone. The one time he went home was to make sure Liho had food. He just couldn’t bring himself to stay there, in his empty apartment - _their_ apartment - with her clothes and her belongings and her cat, her toothbrush and makeup on the bathroom counter and her laundry mixed in with his…not when she was gone, captured by the only people he knew she was afraid of.

At least he’d had company. Clint had been right next to him the entire time, trying to piece together what he knew with what Natasha had told Steve and the bits of information Jarvis had. Steve didn’t think he’d ever seen a single person consume so much coffee.

“ _J, anything off about the basement?”_ Tony asked. “ _We know these dicks like their basements.”_

_“I’ll check, Sir.”_

Steve circled back, not finding anything in the corridor he’d been searching. They were in some kind of old dance academy just outside of Moscow, and the only reason they thought this long-shot of a lead had any credibility was it’s location and the fact that Clint thought she might have mentioned it once. It was abandoned now, but was owned by a family that was thought to be tied to the KGB years ago. The last known person to run the place was deceased now, killed by mysterious means over a decade ago, and his son had disappeared not long after.

It was huge, a giant mansion with three stories of dorms and banquet halls and practice rooms branching off from winding hallways. He’d already combed through the top two levels twice while Tony and Clint took the ground level and basement. So far they’d found a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

“ _We’re never gonna fucking find her,”_ Clint grumbled.

“ _Cheer up, buttercup. I think I found something._ ” Steve stopped in his tracks halfway down the steps to the first floor.

“What is it?”

“ _Could be nothing…Jarvis, this what I think it is?”_

_“If you think it’s a door concealed by a bookcase, then it might be exactly what you think it is, Sir._ ”

“ _Bingo.”_

Steve sprinted down the rest of the giant staircase. “I’m on my way. Stark, where are you?”

_“Library, towards the back. God, I love secret doors.”_

Steve found him quickly enough, leaning against a pillar in the library with the faceplate of his Iron Man helmet up, Clint already standing next to him with an arrow knocked in his bow.

“Let’s go,” he said, lifting his shield and passing them, heading through the door Tony had opened in the wall. They both followed, Clint preparing his bow and Tony’s helmet clicking shut.

It was another staircase, but this one seemed to bypass the basement level, curving back around towards the footprint of the mansion and ending in an old wooden door.

“ _I’m reading heat signatures on the other side,”_ Jarvis warned them. Anticipation bubbled in the pit of Steve’s stomach. This _had_ to be it. It it wasn’t…

He didn’t want to think about that yet.

“Ready?” he whispered, and Clint nodded next to him, lifting his bow and aiming past Steve towards the door. Iron Man’s repulsors whirred behind him. He took a breath, tightened his shield in his arm, and kicked the door open.

There were two guards on the other side, and guessing by their lack of response, they hadn’t been expecting the Avengers to come bursting through the door. Steve took them out easily, each with a bash on the head with his shield. There was another door at the end of the hall and it smashed open, four more men rushing through, all shouting in Russian. Clint sent two of them falling to the ground with successive arrows and Tony forced the rest of them back with a single repulsor blast from his palm.

Steve pushed forward through the second door, ignoring Tony’s suggestion that he fly ahead and take out as many as he could. He met another group of them, taking them all out efficiently before they could even raise their guns.

The commotion had seemingly started to alert the entire place of their arrival, and when he barreled down another staircase and into a larger room, they were waiting for him. He flung his shield up to block a wave of gunfire then aimed it at the wall. It bounced off of it and smashed into three of them. He activated the magnets on his arm and the shield flew back to him, hitting one more on the way. They fired at him again just as it fastened to his arm and the bullets ricocheted off of the vibranium, effectively hitting two more and taking them down.

_“Cap, you finding anything?”_ came Tony’s voice.

Steve crossed the room, leaping over the fallen bodies and pushing into a long corridor. He was about to respond when he felt it, a weird electric currant that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Clint sprinted up behind him and slid to a halt, shooting a look over at Steve that told him he felt it too.

And then he heard a scream, one that unmistakably belonged to Natasha.

Steve took off in a sprint towards the sound and, shield first, smashed through the door at the end of the hall. He hit the first two people he saw in the face with his shield and another one ahead of him fell with an arrow between his eyes. In that split second before the other two people in the room realized what was happening he glanced over to the source of the electricity coursing through the air.

His blood turned to ice in his veins. He recognized that machine; it was identical to the one they found in a bunker in Berlin when he and Sam had gone after Bucky years ago. And Natasha was inside of it.

Clint flew past him, smacking one of the other men in the room with the edge of his bow. Steve made a beeline to the chair and smashed the controls on the side of it, shutting it down. Natasha stopped screaming but was still whimpering in pain, her eyes shut tight. Her skin was covered in a thick sheen of sweat and dirt, and there was dried blood dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. He ripped the contraption away from her head; it broke easily and he threw it uselessly to the ground.

“Natasha!”

She didn’t respond. She was bound by the wrists and ankles, so Steve made quick work of smashing them with the edge of his shield until she was free and he could drag her off of it. She was limp in his arms, so he lowered her to the ground, adjusting himself to hover over her and press his fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong, albeit incredibly fast.

“I’m impressed, Captain.”

Steve whipped his head around and his eyes fell on the man who had spoken in heavily accented English; he was much more well-kept than the rest of the thugs they’d taken down on the way in, but he still grinned with yellow teeth. Despite the sick smile, however, Steve could see the terror in his eyes as he looked past the bow aimed directly in between his eyes.

“Shut the fuck up,” Clint snarled, lowering his bow so the tip of his arrow was only inches from his face. Tony flew in and landed, glancing around the scene and then raising a glowing, readied palm at the man’s chest. He ignored Clint and continued to stare at Steve.

“Such a shame you were too late to-“

He was cut off with a blast of light from Tony’s hand and with a strangled cry he slumped over, unconscious.

“What the hell is that thing?” Tony asked, his helmet contracting back into his suit, eyeing the chair Natasha had been in.

“I think they were trying to wipe her,” Clint replied, swallowing hard, glancing between the chair and Natasha, still lying unconscious on the ground. Steve turned his attention back to her.

“Shit,” he breathed. She was breathing a little slower now, but he could still feel her trembling under him. He pushed her hair back, cold and wet from sweat, and then rested his hand on the side of her face. “Natasha,” he breathed. Her eyelids twitched, but she didn’t react. “Nat, love, can you hear me?”

“We need to get her back to the jet. Get her vitals and an IV,” Tony turned back to the passed out man before him. “You know him?” he asked Clint.

“Yeah,” he replied bitterly. “He was her handler. I thought we killed the fucker years ago.” He pulled the string back on his bow. “Apparently it didn’t stick.”

“Barton,” Steve warned, glancing back at him. “Don’t. We’ll take him back, turn him in. If the Red Room is operating again, we’ll need him.” Clint sighed irritably, still holding the string taut but not releasing the arrow. “He kidnapped and tortured an American citizen who happens to be an Avenger _and_ former SHIELD agent. He’s not getting away.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, then before Steve could tell him not to, he adjusted his aim and shot him right in the knee. The man jerked and cried out but didn’t wake up.

“ _Clint_ …“ Steve sighed, but he couldn’t bring himself to reprimand him. Clint just shrugged.

“He deserved it.”

Steve couldn’t argue with that.

After destroying the machine Natasha had been hooked to with a repulsor blast from Tony and restraining the man - Ivan Petrovitch, Clint had supplied - they quickly made their way back to the quinjet sitting on the front lawn of the estate. Tony lifted them off the ground immediately while Clint secured Petrovitch in one of the alcoves. Steve pulled out the stretcher they kept stored on the jet and settled Natasha on it, hooking her up to an IV to replenish her fluids while Jarvis tracked her vitals. She seemed physically okay, but Steve had seen firsthand what that same technology had done to Bucky.

They made it to the tower in record time, and Bruce was waiting for them. Tony took care of Petrovitch while Steve carried Natasha to Bruce’s lab, Clint close behind. He hooked her up to a new IV, took her vitals again and checked a few of her more heavily bruised areas for internal bleeding, but everything seemed to check out normal. She had been drugged, he found out, but the fluids flooding her system were effectively flushing them out. As for any change in brain activity, all they could do was wait.

So they’d moved her downstairs to Steve’s room, the one they stayed in when they didn’t want to travel across the city to Brooklyn. Steve hadn’t been sure about moving her, but Bruce assured him all she really needed to do was sleep off the trauma and whatever they’d drugged her with. Clint hung around for several hours after they moved her, either slumped into an armchair by the window or pacing the floor. Finally Steve talked him into retiring to his own room downstairs to get some sleep, and he agreed only after Jarvis promised to contact him if anything changed.

Steve tried to stay awake himself, but once Clint had left and he’d dimmed the lights in the room, he realized how truly and completely _exhausted_ he was. He could function on significantly less sleep than the average person, but only getting a few fitful hours over a couple days was starting to get to him.

He had just begun to doze where he sat with his back against the headboard when he felt movement next to him. His eyes flew open and he dropped his gaze to see Natasha’s face twitch a few times, a crease forming between her brows.

“Nat?” he said softly. She let out a soft groan and her eyelids fluttered open, her tired eyes staring at the ceiling in confusion. “Hey-“

She flinched as if she hadn’t realized he was there. Her head fell towards him and she blinked, confused.

“Steve?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

Suddenly she gasped, bolting upright and pushing herself away from him.

“No…no, stay away from me,” she whispered, her eyes wide and her voice shaking. Steve froze, remembering what Bruce had told them. _We won’t know if they wiped her until she wakes up._

“Nat, it’s me. It’s okay.” He made a move to reach for her, but she pushed herself further, up to the end of the bed.

“Don’t,” she choked out. “I’ll hurt you, I’ll…” She trailed off, her eyes darting around the room. “This is what he wanted, he…he wanted me to come back, and…and kill you, he-“ He reached for again, but she was too sluggish to hop off the bed in time. He took one arm in both hand and pulled her trembling body against his. “Steve, please-“

“Shh, it’s okay. He didn’t do anything, okay?” He kissed the top of her hair. “We got you out of there. The FBI has him. It’s okay.”

She was shaking violently, but didn’t make a move to push herself away. Instead she buried her head against his chest, sobbing into his t-shirt. It made his heart ache, seeing her like this. He’d never once seen her cry, nothing more than a few tears. But this…this was something else entirely.


	7. Chapter 7

_But we run our course, we pretend that we're okay_   
_Now if we jump together at least we can swim_   
_Far away from the wreck we made_

Steve had been staring at Clint’s door for exactly twelve and a half minutes when someone down the hall exited their apartment, making him jump. He’d forgotten where he was for those long minutes, knowing there was nothing between him and Natasha but a single, dark, somehow completely terrifying door.

The girl shot him a look when she passed, and then he was alone again.

He had to knock.

He raised is hand and hesitated, suddenly regretting this _completely_ , before tapping his knuckles lightly on the wood.

He heard the scratch of nails against the hardwood - Clint’s dog, probably - but that was it. Steve shoved the images of Natasha sneaking out through the window aside and took a deep breath, knocking a little louder.

“Nat?” he called softly. There was no answer. “Nat, it’s me. Please, just…”

He trailed off, screwing his eyes up against the stinging behind them. There wasn’t a response, but he heard movement on the other side. A small exhale, nothing more. It was barely detectable, but just enough for someone with hearing as enhanced as his to pick up on. Almost like it was done on purpose.

“Natasha…” his voice cracked and he paused, taking in a shuddering breath, desperately trying to remember everything he wanted to say to her. “I’m not gonna…I just wanna talk. Please.”

“I can’t.”

It was no louder than a breath, but he still heard it through the thick oak between them.

“Why not?”

She didn’t reply. Steve took a deep breath, a tear sliding down his cheek, desperately wishing this conversation wasn’t happening through a door.

“Clint told me what happened,” he breathed. He heard her curse lowly in Russian. “I’m sorry…I should’ve…I should’ve figured it out. I should’ve known. I should’ve…come over here sooner.” He choked on a sob, his hand curling into a fist where it was still resting on the door. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The tears streamed steadily down his cheeks now, and he couldn’t be bothered trying to hold them back, even if he risked someone else walking through the hall. She wasn’t speaking, but he could hear her quick, soft inhales that indicated she was trying not to let him hear her silent sobs, and it sent a burning ache through his chest.

“If you’re not going to talk to me, just…listen, please?” he whispered finally, once he’d taken a few deep breaths to find his voice again. “I don’t blame you. You _have_ to know that. And I’m…whenever you’re ready to come home, I’ll…I’ll be waiting for you. Okay?” Nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut again, taking in a sharp breath. “And I love you. You know that. I…I love you _so_ _much_ , Nat…”

He was met with silence, but could still hear her on the other side. She’d heard him though, and there wasn’t much else he could do. He straightened himself back upright, letting out a defeated sigh, but paused before forcing himself to turn around.

“I-I’ll leave you alone, for now, if that’s what you want. But I’m not leaving you. I’m not gonna give up.” He swallowed thickly, desperately hoping she’d open the door when she realized he was going to leave, but knowing deep down she wouldn’t. “I love you,” he breathed one last time, then squared his shoulders and walked away before he decided to do something stupid like break down Clint’s door.

Steve didn’t sleep that night, not for lack of trying. He’d barely slept since she left, only a few hours here and there, many of which were on the couch after being awake so long the serum flowing through his veins went into overdrive to keep up. By that point he’d be so exhausted he’d pass out without even being aware he was falling asleep.

When he returned home from Clint’s that afternoon, he’d been running on three days without so much as a power nap, but sleep still wouldn’t come. He didn’t know how long he’d laid there, on the couch staring up at the ceiling, but he knew it was definitely the middle of the night when his phone rang shrilly from the kitchen, snapping him violently out of the haze his mind had sunk into.

He ignored it. It wasn’t Natasha - she wouldn’t call him right now, plus she hated talking on the phone - and he didn’t want to talk to anyone else but her. It went to voicemail, but then it rang again, and again, and a fourth time. When he got tired of listening to it, he pushed himself up off the sofa and shuffled across the room, wanting to either silence it or throw it across the wall.

It was Tony. _Shit._

It lit up once again while he stared down at it, Tony’s name popping up on the screen. He sighed, then answered it and pulled it up to his ear.

“What?” he said shortly.

“That rogue Hydra cell we were tracking in Turkey? Well, we found them.” Steve let out a sigh that he didn’t attempt to hide from Tony. The last thing he wanted to do was strap on his shield. “They’re currently terrorizing downtown Istanbul.”

Dammit. He couldn’t ignore that.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Look, Cap…if you’re not up for this-“

“I said I’ll be right there.”

Steve hung up without another word, blinking back the involuntary tears that had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere, and punched a hole in the drywall next to him before turning to his room to go get dressed.

He was the last one to arrive at the tower, finding Bruce, Tony, and Clint all sitting at the conference table. They didn’t see him, but he could hear them speaking lowly to themselves, Clint leaning on the table with his face in his hands.

“…much as I hate to admit it, we need Rogers for this.” Tony was saying. Steve paused just outside the door where they wouldn’t see him.

“It’s already a risk. Has he even slept?”

“Doesn’t look like it. He’s reckless anyway, but now? Who knows what-”

“I have to tell him,” Clint cut in, his voice muffled against his hands. “It’s my fault. I _have_ to.”

“Tell me what?” Tony and Bruce jumped, but Clint just sighed, leaning back in his chair. Steve carefully entered the room, receiving pitied stares from Bruce and Tony. He wanted to be angry about it, but couldn’t find the energy to be. Clint was avoiding him. “What’s going on?”

“Nazis. You ready to start punching?” Tony said, much too quickly. Steve ignored him, keeping his eyes on Clint, who was still staring determinedly at the table.

“Barton.”

Finally Clint took a hard, deep breath, and turned in his chair to face Steve.

The second he saw the look in his eyes, glazed with tears and obvious guilt, it was as if all of the air had been sucked right out of his lungs for the second time that week.

“I’m sorry,” Clint breathed. “I didn’t…I didn’t think she’d…I got home and she…her bag was gone, and the cat was still there…and I…”

Steve didn’t stop his rambling, mostly for the fact that he’d suddenly forgotten how to speak. He felt dizzy, like if he didn’t sit down he’d fall over, but he also couldn’t bring himself to move. Clint was still spewing out apologies, but he couldn’t comprehend the words he was saying.

The only thing he could understand was what he _wasn’t_ saying: Natasha was gone.

“Suit up,” he found himself saying suddenly, ignoring the looks they were giving him. “Wheels up in five.”

“Rogers-“

Steve didn’t wait to hear the rest, or even bother trying to figure out who’d said it. He turned away and left the room, his heart beating so hard he thought it would fly right out of his chest. It wasn’t until he’d taken the elevator down to the locker room and saw that Tony had already repaired the locker he’d damaged earlier that day that it all came crashing down on him.

He collapsed onto the bench, the same one he’d been sitting on just hours ago when Clint told him why she’d left, when he told her what those fuckers had done to her, when assured him she wouldn’t run. His eyes burned but he couldn’t cry anymore, couldn’t think or feel or do anything but stare at the smooth, sleek, un-dented metal in front of him.

There wasn’t a point anymore, was there? She’d made her choice, and if he went after her, she’d run even farther. He knew her, and he knew if she didn’t want to be found - especially by him - she wouldn’t be.

Maybe she wanted this. Maybe, deep down, she’d never intended on letting them get this far. It hadn’t started off heading anywhere in particular, just lapses in judgement and adrenaline highs and lonely nights where they set aside what they should and shouldn’t be doing and let themselves be there for the other. Unconventional, sure, but it worked for them, up until it didn’t.

Up until he finally got his shit together, told her he couldn’t do it anymore. Waited until the last possible moment, when she’d forced it out of him, to admit that at some point he’d fallen in love with her. When she’d stared at him, a terrified look on her face, and told him he could do better than her. She’d left and suddenly the world itself had lost all meaning, like she’d ripped his heart out of his chest and taken it with her. Until she came back a few hours later - kissed him like it was the first time all over again and told him she was sorry and she loved him too - he didn’t think anything would feel worse than that.

Then she was captured by the Red Room, and he didn’t think anything was worse than that. And then she started pulling away from him, and he could slowly feel her building up her walls again, and that was even worse, not knowing what he was doing wrong to make her regress so fast in so little time. And then he woke up without her, one of his dog tags left on his nightstand and the cat gone, and it was even _worse_.

This time it didn’t feel like she’d left a hole in his chest where his heart was supposed to be. It was still there, beating strongly, sending a nauseating ache through his chest and into the pit of his stomach. It was still there and she wasn’t, and somehow, that was the worst of all.

The others didn’t speak to Steve the entire flight to Istanbul, not unless they needed to. He could feel their stares though, the ones radiating pity, and could hear their whispers about keeping him back as much as possible. He wasn’t up to this, wasn’t ready to step into the line of fire. He was too reckless, too upset, spiraling too fast. He wasn’t in his right mind. They shouldn’t have called him.

Steve just listened, too mentally and physically exhausted to fight back. At least this was a distraction. It worked when he came out of the ice, throwing himself back in to fight aliens and gods and then signing on right away to work for SHIELD. Why couldn’t it work now?

It wasn’t until later, when he panicked and ran back inside a building against Tony and Clint’s protests, just because he wasn’t sure if he’d gotten everyone out, that he realized they had a point. It wasn’t until the building exploded that he realized he _was_ being reckless. It wasn’t until it collapsed on top of him that he realized he _hadn’t_ been up for this. It wasn’t until he was seconds away from losing consciousness, crushed under brick and steel and everything else that had fallen on top of him, that he realized even if Natasha _did_ come back, he probably wasn’t going be alive to know.


	8. Chapter 8

_Then only for a minute_   
_I want to change my mind_   
_'Cause this just don't feel right to me_

Natasha didn’t watch the news. She always figured it was because whenever they talked about some disastrous event or another, she usually knew more than they did on the subject. The Avengers would save the day, the press would get whatever little snippet of information their lawyers allowed them to give, and the rest stayed classified.

The result was a bunch of idiots arguing over whether the Avengers had the right to intervene, whether they’d made the right calls, whether the government should have been involved, whether it was okay that half of them used to work for SHIELD, and whether they could be trusted when two of their teammates were rumored to be sleeping with each other and there was too much drama surrounding them to be useful.

It was a fucking shit show.

So when she turned it on in her tiny, run-down motel outside of Chicago, she wasn’t sure why she stopped at the news. Maybe it was a distraction. If she wasn’t out _saving_ the world right now, she could at least know what was going on with it. Really, she probably just wanted to hate something more than she hated herself.

She’d left before Clint got home, after she was sure the coast was clear. She felt guilty for lying to him about still being there when he got back, but in her defense, he _had_ sent Steve over. She wasn’t expecting that. The one thing she’d relied on was that Steve was going to give her space.

So she’d taken a bus across town to the airport and bought a one-way ticket on the next flight taking off, flew to Cleveland, rented a car under one of her fake IDs, and gotten on the highway without caring where she went. It wasn’t until she’d almost fallen asleep at the wheel that she decided to finally find somewhere to sleep for a few hours.

That was six days ago.

She’d been living off of food from the gas station across the parking lot of the motel, which thankfully also sold vodka (it was cheap and tasted like shit, but she didn’t really care). She’d still barely slept, visions of Ivan and the Red Room and Steve holding a tiny, blonde-haired, blue-eyed child plaguing her mind every time she shut her eyes. She’d let herself lay in the awful and uncomfortable bed, sleeping when her body was too exhausted to let her stay awake anymore, and absently watching hours of shitty television while letting her mind spiral deeper into the pit she’d dug for it when she was awake.

Had she kept moving, had she not stayed in this shitty motel and let herself break down, had she not stopped on a late night news channel, she wouldn’t have seen the story about the Avengers disaster of a mission in Istanbul. And she wouldn’t have watched in horror as a building collapsed on Captain America through a shaky cell phone video that had been revealed and immediately plastered over every single news channel in the country.

The second she’d heard someone mention the Avengers she’d snapped out of her daze, and focused her vision on the television just in time for them to play the video. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe, and she fumbled for the remote to turn up the volume, but her hands shook too much to hold it steady.

It didn’t matter. The news story ended as soon as she got the volume up, and they moved on to a local crime investigation. Like they didn’t care, like it was old news.

Natasha turned off the tv and chucked the remote at it, which bounced off of the screen and clattered to the floor. She gave herself exactly three seconds to get ahold of herself before flying off of the bed and digging through her backpack for her burner.

The first number she called was Steve’s, and it went straight to voicemail. She tried not to panic - his phone was probably destroyed or the battery was dead...it didn’t mean anything, it _couldn’t_ \- and, ignoring the lump burning in the back of her throat and the stinging in her eyes, called Clint next. He didn’t answer either.

She felt dizzy, like if she tried to get up off the floor she’d topple over, but she pushed through it and zipped up her bag. She used the phone to look up the news story, her eyes filling with hot, guilty tears when she realized this had happened almost a week ago. She skimmed it the article, unable to comprehend any of the words besides the ones telling her they’d finally gotten him stable enough to transport back to the US two days ago. Apparently he was still in the ICU at New York-Presbyterian, ‘fighting for his life,’ as the article put it.

The flight from Chicago to New York City was quite possibly the longest few hours she’d ever endured. Since she’d left at about midnight, it was nearing four-thirty in the morning when she finally arrived at the hospital. They’d blocked off the entire hall he was in, so it wasn’t hard to find. They’d recognized her and let her through, and she was still trying to talk herself into opening the door and going into his room when it opened and Sam appeared in front of her.

“Natasha?” He looked surprised to see her, but if he was thrown off by the frenzied state she was sure she was in, he didn’t make it obvious. He swallowed thickly, pulling the door shut behind him. “We, um…didn’t think you’d come.”

“Is he okay?” she breathed, not caring if her voice was shaking. She didn’t understand why Sam was blocking the door. She needed to see him, make sure he was there and breathing and _not dead_.

“He’s alive,” Sam replied, his voice uncharacteristically harsh despite how exhausted he looked. “Look, Natasha…you being here…”

Sam didn’t want her there. It hit her hard and she took a half step back, suddenly feeling uncomfortable in front of someone with whom she’d always had a close relationship.

She understood, of course. Steve was Sam’s best friend. Obviously he wanted to protect him.

Natasha glanced past him at the door, blinking back the tears that had suddenly started blurring her vision. But she wasn’t going to argue. She didn’t have it in her. This was her fault, anyway. She nodded, her eyes lingering on Steve’s door for a few more seconds before she turned away.

“Shit,” she heard Sam breathed under his breath, and a split second later he jogged to catch up with her. She paused, not daring to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know how to… _do_ this, you know? I don’t know what he would want.”

“It’s okay.” Natasha swallowed thickly, daring herself - _begging_ , at this point - not to cry in front of Sam.

“It’s just…he’s _really_ fucked up about this. About you leaving.”

“Can you at least tell me what happened?” She finally glanced over to him, his eyes boring into hers for a few long seconds as he considered. Finally he nodded.

“Stark, Banner, and Barton were dealing with stopping the attack, they had Steve evacuating the buildings in the area. He wasn’t sure if he’d gotten everyone so he ran back in right before it blew up. They didn’t find him for two days.” Natasha averted her gaze, desperately trying to blink away the tears in her eyes, but one of them broke free and slid down her cheek. “Fourteen broken ribs, collapsed lung, a _lot_ of internal bleeding. The entire left side of his body was pretty much completely crushed. And a piece or rebar went right through his abdomen. It’s a miracle he didn’t bleed out. Luckily the serum kicked in and started healing the puncture wound around the rebar, but they had to reopen it to get it out. And his bones started healing by the time they found him, so they had to re-break them all to set them properly.”

By the time Sam finished, Natasha couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. They streamed steadily down her cheeks, and she quickly wiped them away, only for them to be replaced with fresh ones.

This was her fault. Steve was a mess because of her, he’d gone on that mission when he was distracted because of her, he was reckless _because of her_.

She _knew_ this was going to happen, knew it from the second she decided to throw all common sense out of the window and start sleeping with him all those years ago. She knew she was going to get emotionally compromised, she _knew_ he would get hurt in the end. She couldn’t have guessed it would be like this, but she should have.

No wonder Sam didn’t want her around.

“Is he gonna be okay?” she asked, once she finally found her voice. Sam was staring at the floor, avoiding her gaze, his arms crossed tightly against his chest.

“We don’t know. The serum…it isn’t working like it’s supposed to. He’s healing, but not fast enough. Banner thinks it’s because there’s so much internal damage that it’s actually exhausting itself trying to heal everything at once. For now…we just have to wait.”

Natasha backed up a few steps until the back of her knees hit a chair and collapsed into it. She felt nauseous at the thought of Steve being crushed beneath an entire building, his bones shattered and metal sticking out of his body, at the thought that he was in so much mental distress he acted so recklessly, at the thought that his life almost ended - could _still_ end - with the way things were between them. That she wasn’t there to prevent him from being reckless, she wasn’t there to find him, she wasn’t there the entire goddamn time he’d been in the hospital fighting for his life.

“Look…Steve hasn’t told me anything. I don’t know why you left and it doesn’t really matter now. But if you’re here…” Sam trailed off and Natasha lifted her gaze to meet his. “You’re _here_.”

“Sam-“

“I know you love him. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.” He sighed, shaking his head a little. “If you really wanna leave, you can. I won’t tell him you were here.”

He was testing her. Wording his ultimatum in a way that wouldn’t seem like that’s what it was, but still making it clear that if she stayed she couldn’t leave again.

She _could_ stay. She could pretend she hadn’t lived every single day since coming home from Moscow with overwhelming guilt and regret. She could let Steve apologize for whatever he thought he needed to apologize for and move on. Maybe she would be happy again. Maybe they’d never talk about it, about how she’d gotten their child killed before he even knew about it, about how she was at fault. Maybe he’d never bring up a future again, and they could be happy with what they had until he ultimately realized he wasn’t.

Maybe they _could_ be happy. Maybe she’d forgive herself and they’d be content with their lives the way they already were, until something like this happened again, and one of them inevitably got killed.

It all seemed like a fantasy, especially given where they were now. But how did she explain that to Sam? He didn’t even know why she left. He wouldn’t understand.

“Can I see him?”

The words came out of her mouth before she could think to say them, and once they were, there was no taking them back. She didn’t know if she was ready for that, to face him - even unconscious - after how much she’d hurt him. But she _needed_ to. She needed to be there for him. It was the least she could do.

“Yeah,” Sam said finally, after a few long seconds of deliberation. He reached for her and she took his hand, allowing his help to pull her up from the chair. Then he lead the way back to Steve’s room and opened the door.

Natasha stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of him. She suddenly couldn’t breathe, and she choked out a sob, not caring that Sam was standing right beside her. He was covered in hard casts and bandages, a tube down his throat, and even with the machine helping him breathe, she could still notice all of the color drained from his face. This was worse than any other time she’d seen him hurt, even after the Winter Soldier had shot him and he’d almost drowned. He was so _lifeless_ , and if it wasn’t for the steady beeping of a heart monitor, she would have thought he was already dead.

Sam muttered something about giving her time and left, closing the door behind her. When it clicked shut she forced her feet to move and shuffled across the room to stand next to his bed. The hand that wasn’t constricted by heavy casts lay limp on top of the blanket, an IV attached to it that was giving him fluids and nutrients and whatever incredibly strong painkillers they had in the bags hanging above his bed. Natasha reached out for him, not even bothering to hesitate, and her fingers brushed against the back of his hand.

He was _ice cold_ , and she was suddenly horrified at the thought of him waking up freezing. She pulled her hand away and glanced around, finding a blanket on the countertop on the other side of the room. She retrieved it and laid it over him, on top of the flimsy one the hospital had provided.

It pissed her off. Didn’t they know what had happened to him? That he’d drowned and frozen to within an inch of his life, that he still had vivid nightmares about it? That he’d wake up from them, delirious and shivering violently and muttering about the ice, begging her not to let him go back?

She reached for him again, this time sliding her hand around his and squeezing gently before carefully perching herself on the edge of the bed, unable to take her eyes away from his face.

“Steve-“

She choked on his name, and it came out as an involuntary sob that had unexpectedly made its way up her throat before she could stop it. She used her free hand to wipe away the tears that had sprung up again, then took a deep breath, trying to get the control back.

She started again, rubbing the pad of her thumb across his knuckles, _hoping_ he’d choose that moment wake up.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, _solnyshko._ ”

What the _fuck_ was she doing? Sam was right. This wasn’t fair. If he woke up right at that second, if he saw her there? It would make this so much worse. She was being selfish, she _knew_ she was. She _left_ him, what right did she have to sit here by his bed, tears streaming down her face, while he was unconscious and fighting to stay alive? All because she broke his heart, and he did something stupid because of it?

Being there, looking at him like this, it was too much. Her fight or flight instinct kicked in and she pushed herself back to her feet, pulling her hand away from his. Before she turned away, however, she stepped closer to the bed and reached her hand out to push the hair away from his face. She wiped her tears again and leaned forward, pressing her lips softly to his forehead before all but sprinting out of the room.

Sam wasn’t there when she reentered the hall, which she was grateful for. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes as she fled again.

When she got back outside she stopped to catch her breath, collapsing onto a bench and leaning back against a pillar that held up the glass overhang above her. The early-morning air blew lightly against her face, cooling the tears that were sliding steadily down her cheeks. She stared up at the sky, still dark and deep and endless, but tinged slightly purple from the approaching sunrise.

She didn’t know where to go or what to do anymore. She could go _anywhere_ , across the country or over the border to Canada or all the way to Europe. He’d never find her if she didn’t want him to. None of them would.

“You came back.”

Natasha jumped and sat upright, but when her eyes fell on Clint, she let out a breath of relief. He was sitting across from her, on another bench. She hadn’t seen him when she’d burst out the front door of the hospital, which wasn’t like her. When she didn’t reply, he stood and closed the space between them, sitting down next to her and pulling her to him so she could lean her head against her shoulder.

“Go home, Tasha,” he said softly, rubbing his hand up and down her arm.

“I’m so tired,” she breathed, barely above a whisper, her voice shaking. Clint turned towards her, bringing his other hand up to wipe the tears from under her eyes and tilt her head back to look her in the eyes.

“Then stop running. Go _home_.”

Home.

Steve’s apartment - _their_ apartment - in Brooklyn, giant picture windows in the living room that gave them a perfect view of the river. Where they’d watch movies and order takeout because she hated cooking and he was terrible at it, where she’d curl up in the window seat on her phone or reading or working, Liho asleep on her lap, pretending not to notice Steve drawing her from where he sat across the room. Where they would take walks on the promenade or climb up the fire escape to the roof at night to watch the boats go by. Their bedroom with the giant king-sized bed, big enough that Steve wasn’t too tall for it, where she’d wake up every morning with his arms wrapped around her, his legs tangled with hers, and Liho curled up against her.

Going home _did_ sound nice.

Clint pulled himself away from her and stood, reaching out his hand. She stared at it for a few seconds, trying to come up with an excuse not to go with him. But she was so _fucking_ tired, she took his hand and let him pull her up.


	9. Chapter 9

_I want to raise your spirits_   
_I want to see you smile but..._

When Steve woke up, the first thing that crossed is mind was that he wasn’t dead. The last thing he remembered was being crushed by a building, and somehow he’d ended up…well, _not_ underneath a building.

The second thing he thought about was Natasha.

It all came flooding back, that she was gone and there was a good chance the person he could hear sitting next to him wasn’t her.

It wasn’t. It turned out to be Sam, who quickly got the doctors in to check his vitals. He was still too out of it to understand what the doctor said to him, but when they left, Sam filled him in.

It had been ten days since the explosion, eight since they’d found him in the rubble and brought him to a hospital, and six since he’d been stable enough to bring him back to the US. He’d almost bled out in surgery multiple times, had to have all of his bones re-broken and set after the serum started healing them too quickly, and if those things didn’t kill him, the head trauma they said he suffered probably should have. They’d taken off the casts a couple days before he woke up, all of his bones healed enough to where they weren’t necessary, but it would probably take a while longer before the serum finished doing its job.

A while turned into two more weeks in the hospital. Sam had reduced his hours at the VA and stayed in Manhattan for most of it, watching shitty television with him, bringing him takeout instead of the bland food the hospital offered, and helping him through his physical therapy sessions. The rest of the team visited as well, Tony and Bruce coming over from the tower every couple days, and Clint once or twice, even though he didn’t stay long or talk much.

It was nice to have them all checking in on him, but the one person he wanted to see didn’t come, and no one mentioned her. He finally broke down one day and asked Sam about her, but he’d just said he hadn’t talked to her and quickly changed the subject.

The announcement from his doctor that he was finally able to go home was a bittersweet one. He was absolutely _sick_ of the hospital and bored out of his goddamn mind, but the reminder of what he was going home to - or rather, _not_ going home to - still loomed over him. He tried to remind himself enough times while he was cooped up in his room that she was gone and there was nothing he could do about it, but when the morning came that Sam finally drove him back to Brooklyn, he dreaded it.

Climbing up four flights of stairs was not easy with a crutch he couldn’t hold onto that well and a half-healed scar across his abdomen that felt like it was going to rip open again, but somehow they managed. His apartment was dark when Sam unlocked the door and pushed it open, and despite his protests Steve insisted he was fine, he’d order out for dinner, and just wanted to take a nap.

In reality, he wasn’t sure if he could hold himself together much longer and didn’t want to break down in front of him.

When Sam reluctantly closed and locked the door behind him, Steve fell back onto the couch and closed his eyes, gearing himself up for spending the next several weeks here, alone. All of his mental preparation hadn’t prepared him for how _quiet_ it was.

He could feel himself spiraling back to that feeling - the one that had felt like the ice and drowning and Bucky shooting him and waking up with Natasha gone that morning all at once - for a few heart-shattering seconds before he felt movement next to him. He tilted his head upright and frowned when his eyes met two bright green ones, staring up at him from a mass of dark fur that had just hopped up on the couch next to him.

“Steve?”

His heart leaped in his chest and he lifted his eyes away from Liho, falling on Natasha instead. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and she was wearing one of his t-shirts over a pair of leggings, her eyes puffy from sleep. She stood in the doorway to the bedroom, her arms crossed tightly around her torso, staring at him uncertainly.

“What are you doing here?”

It was the first thing that came to his mind, and he hadn’t realized how harshly he’d said the words until he saw her flinch. He pushed himself up with his good arm, grunting against the fresh pain that shot through his stomach.

“I didn’t know you were coming home today,” she said softly, taking a few careful steps towards him. “I…Clint didn’t tell me. I’m sorry, I can-“

“Don’t leave.” Natasha swallowed thickly, averting her gaze. “You don’t have to, I mean. It’s…it’s okay. I just…I didn’t think you’d…”

“I know,” she breathed. She took a deep breath and continued crossing the room to sit on the coffee table across from him. He gave her a minute, desperate to reach out and pull her towards him, but letting her get there on her own. When she finally braved a glance up at him her eyes were glazed over in unshed tears and her bottom lip trembled. “How are you feeling?” she said finally, her voice shaking.

“Like a building fell on top of me,” he replied, the words coming out dry and not nearly as light as he’d hoped. She blinked a few times, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “We don’t have to do this now, Nat. It’s fine.”

“No it’s not.” She took a shuddering breath and dropped her gaze to the floor. “I thought by now I’d know what to say, but…”

She trailed off, shutting her eyes shut and shaking her head. Steve couldn’t take it anymore and reached his good hand out to rest on her knee. That seemed to be her breaking point, because she dropped her own on top of his and squeezed it hard before letting out a harsh sob.

“Come here,” he said softly, and she gave in, pushing herself off of the table and twisting around to sit next to him instead. He let go of her hand and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her as close as he could as she buried her face against his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, her fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt.

“I know,” he muttered back, letting his forehead fall to rest against her hair.

“I was so afraid to tell you,” she whispered, her voice muffled against his chest. An ache that had nothing to do with healing internal organs shot through him at the reminder, the one thing he’d desperately tried to keep locked away in the depths of his mind since Clint told him. “I was _terrified_ , I didn’t even know it was possible, and I wanted to just get rid of it and not tell you, but I _couldn’t_. And then we went to Moscow, before I could tell you and…and then I _definitely_ couldn’t, because…because it was my fault that they-“

“Don’t say that,” he said, cutting her off. He pushed her away just enough to look her in the eyes, and reached up to swipe away the tears from her cheeks. “It was _not_ your fault.”

She let out an indignant huff and leaned away from him, dropping her gaze to the floor. “If I hadn’t gone on that mission-“

“Then we wouldn’t have the leader of the Red Room, who was supposed to be dead, who _tortured_ you for _years_ , locked up in a super-max American prison.” She just took a shaky breath and shook her head again. “We weren’t ready for that, Natasha,” he continued softly, sliding his fingers between hers and gripping her hand tightly. It was something he’d been too afraid to admit to himself, but he knew deep down it was true. “And…we can be upset about it, you’re _allowed_ to be upset about it. You can be sad and angry. What they did you you-“ He stopped himself, fresh anger bubbling up in the pit of his stomach. “Trust me, it took all I had not to to kill that asshole myself for taking that away from you, for hurting you like that. But we can’t change it.”

“But you want that,” she said finally, once he’d finished. She squeezed his hand, but still refused to look at him. “I don’t know if I can give it to you. Or if I want to.”

“I don’t know either. I almost _died_ , Nat.” That finally got her to lift her eyes and meet his, glazed over with fresh tears. “Our job is dangerous. And the thought of leaving you like that, of making you do it on your own? Or putting a kid in that kind of danger? We _both_ have enemies, ones that would love to get their hands on the serum.”

“And what if you change your mind?” she whispered, her wide eyes boring into his.

“Then we’ll talk about it then.” She blinked and let a tear slide down her cheek. “I don’t blame you. For _any_ of it.”

“You should.”

“I don’t.” He raised his free hand and winced a little, but pushed through it to tuck a loose piece of hair behind her ear. It fell to rest on the side of her face, and he swiped his thumb under her eye to dry the wetness underneath it. “I will _never_ blame you. Ever.”

“I don’t deserve you,” she breathed, and for the first time in weeks, his lips curved up into a smile.

“You deserve a lot more than you think you do.”

He’d told her that a million times, and he knew she didn’t believe it most days. But if he had to spend the rest of his life convincing her, he would.

Natasha pulled her hand from his and his heart sank before he realized she wasn’t moving away from him. She twisted around and cupped his face in her hands, then she pushed herself up to lean over him and pressed her lips softly against his.

Steve practically melted, the wave of relief that washed over him mixed with the feeling of her lips on his making him dizzy. She deepened it, sliding her hands back to run through his hair, and it wasn’t until his lungs burned that he tilted his head back to take a breath.

“I love you,” she mumbled against his lips, and he smiled.

“I know,” he breathed back, reaching up with his good arm to push her hair back from her face. “I love you too.”

She kissed him again, and it started off slow, but then she was pulling her legs underneath her and leaning into him, pushing him back against the couch. He shifted uncomfortably, knowing the ache radiating over his body was worth it if she kept kissing him like she was. But then she pushed against him just a little too much, and he let out an involuntary gasp as fresh pain shot out across his shoulder. She sprang backwards, guilt flooding her wide eyes.

“ _Shit_ , I’m sorry, are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Steve took a few deep breaths, willing his body to stop working against him. Damn serum not working fast enough. “Yeah, I’m…” His shoulder twinged again and he inhaled sharply. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you hungry? Did you eat?”

“Yeah.” He pushed himself upright again, wincing but able to sit up without too much discomfort. “Sam got us breakfast on the way here.” She nodded, but didn’t look convinced, looking him over carefully, like she was trying to find something else she could fix. “I could use a nap, though,” he added, and she raised an eyebrow, the corner of her lips ticking upwards.

“It’s 9:30 in the morning,” she replied, and he shrugged with his good shoulder.

“Sleeping in a hospital bed made for someone half your size doesn’t count as sleeping.”

Natasha unfolded her legs from underneath her and stood up, reaching her hand out to him. He grasped it tightly and braced himself before leaning forward and letting her pull him up off the couch. When he stood he stumbled a bit, but she wrapped her arm securely around his waist and let him lean on her until he was steady.

“Told you you’d break a hip one of these days if you didn’t stop being an idiot,” she muttered through gritted teeth when they started moving slowly towards the bedroom.

“I think…that’s the only thing I…I _didn’t_ break…” he panted, and she shot him a small sideways grin.

It took painstaking effort but she finally got him to the bed and sat him down on it. She helped him twist around and ease onto his back, then went to the other side to climb in next to him and pull the blanket up over them. She made a show out of ensuring he was fully covered then curled up at his side, tucking her head under his chin.

It felt _so good_ to have her there, wrapped up in his arms again, the distance that had built up between them the last few months gone. Even before she left he still felt it, felt _all_ of it. Felt her closing herself off, drifting away from him. His heart ached when he thought about everything she was feeling, everything that was racing through her mind at every waking hour. The reason why she shut herself down, pushed him away every chance she got. He desperately wished he could have done something different…broke her down until she told him what was wrong, held onto her a little tighter, made more of an effort instead of giving her space, made her take more time off after getting back from Moscow instead of letting her throw herself back into work, paid more attention to how she was acting before they even left for Russia.

None of that mattered now. They still had a lot to work through, but she was _here_. She wasn’t running anymore, wasn’t shutting him out.

“Steve?” He hummed in response, and she snuggled into him a bit more before continuing. “It’s going to take me a long time before I’m…okay. About this.”

“I know.” He twisted his head as far as he could without aggravating his injuries and placed a soft kiss against her hair. “Just…promise you won’t shut me out again like that.”

“I won’t.” She was silent again, and he could feel the wetness spreading across his shirt, so he pulled her closer, tightening his grip around her waist. “I should have been there when you woke up,” she mumbled finally. “I wanted to…but seeing you like that…” she shook her head lightly, her hair tickling his chin. “I didn’t think you’d want me there. I couldn’t go back.”

He opened his mouth to argue that he did want her there - _god_ had he wanted her there, hoping less and less every time the door opened that it was her - but then her words caught up with him. “Back?”

Natasha pulled away and propped herself up on her elbow to look down at him.

“Sam didn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

Natasha hesitated, pulling her bottom lip under her teeth for a second. “I didn’t find out until a week after it happened. When I got there…Sam stopped me. Told me if I left again he wouldn’t tell you, because it wasn’t fair to you.”

Her bottom lip trembled again, and Steve gritted his teeth through the pain of lifting his injured arm to push her hair back behind her ear. He let it slide down, the pad of his thumb brushing lightly across her cheek.

“Why did you come here?”

“I don’t know,” she breathed, then tucked herself back down onto his chest, reaching up and sliding her fingers between his as he dropped his hand. “I couldn’t run anymore.”

“I’m glad you did,” he answered softly, then lowly voiced the thought that had been plaguing him since he saw her standing in the doorway. “You’re not gonna leave again?”

“No.”

There was no hesitation, no question about her answer. She didn’t elaborate, but the way she gently squeezed his hand was reassurance enough: she was home.


	10. Chapter 10

_Lately, I've been, I've been thinking_  
_I want you to be happier, I want you to be happier_

**A FEW WEEKS LATER**

“Natasha.” She frowned and groaned sleepily. “Nat, wake up.”

“ _What_.” Steve pushed her hair away from her shoulder started peppering light kisses over it and up the back of her neck. She ignored him, burying her face farther into the pillow. “It’s Sunday, Rogers. Go back to sleep.”

“Doctor said I’m cleared for physical activity today, remember?” he mumbled against her skin.

“I’m not cleared for physical activity until after ten,” she grumbled back. He just huffed out a laugh, pushing the strap of her tank top to the side for better access. Finally Natasha rolled onto her back and shot him a glare. “I hate you.”

The corner of his mouth curved up into a small smile that was actually more of a smirk. _Little shit._

“You love me.”

“This is our last day off before we have to go to back to work. And you’re waking me up at-“

“Ten-thirty.”

Natasha stared at him for a second, her argument fading mid-sentence, and she glanced over to the nightstand where her phone was. She picked it up to turn on the screen, and sure enough…he was right.

“Damn.” She dropped her phone and met Steve’s gaze. He was watching her with a satisfied, lopsided grin that she wanted to smack right off his face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Natasha couldn’t help the smile that spread across her lips, and she reached up to where he was leaning over her and ruffled his hair, which was already sticking up in every direction from sleep. Then she let her hand slide down to his chin, sliding her fingers through the coarse hair there.

“Just because you’re going back to work doesn’t mean you’re gonna shave…right?”

“Partial to the beard?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I mean, I don’t _hate_ it.”

Steve didn’t answer, just gazed down at her with an amused look on his face. He hadn’t kept up with shaving since coming home from the hospital, and at first it was mostly because it was exhausting and uncomfortable with his injuries. He must have noticed how unopposed she was to it, because he left it even after he started feeling better.

He was still watching her, his eyes sparkling bright blue in the dim light that filtered in through the curtains. For a second all she could do was stare back, suddenly overcome with so much emotion that her heart felt like it might burst right out of her chest.

It was hard for her to comprehend that this man loved her so much that he still looked at her like that, with nothing but pure adoration, even after how much she’d hurt him. The more time went on, the more she realized how _wrong_ she was, how stupid she was to walk away from him. She still struggled with those looming thoughts of insecurity that would probably never stop haunting her, but it took running away and almost losing him for her to finally start to realize that maybe, over time, he could help her move on from her nightmares.

“Marry me,” she breathed suddenly, the words flying out of her mouth before her brain could catch up to her. It wasn’t until the smile faded off of his lips that she realized what she’d said. He just gaped at her, and the longer he went without responding, the further her heart sank into a pit of regret. “Steve-“

“I…uh…shit. Hang on.”

He pushed himself away from her and all but sprinted out of the room. Natasha closed her eyes tightly against the sting, covering her face with her hands.

“ _Fuck.”_ she breathed, her voice cracking. She was an idiot. She’d just _left_ him; sure, things were _better_ , but that didn’t change the fact that she’d hurt him…a lot. They needed more time.

And besides, who the hell was she to want to _marry_ someone? She’d never, not once in her entire life, wanted to marry anyone, even if that person was Steve. Her mind had brought up the idea a few times before, but the thought absolutely terrified her, so she’d never allowed herself to dwell on it. Besides, they’d never once spoken about it, and he always seemed perfectly fine with what they had.

Steve returned, and without a word he climbed back into bed, dropping down to hover over her with one elbow on either side. She blinked furiously in an attempt to hide the tears that had begun forming in her eyes, and then he lifted something up in front of her.

It was a ring. Just a band, silver, made up of delicate Celtic knots with tiny little diamonds in the center of each one.

“It was my mom’s,” he said softly, when words failed her. “My dad saved up for two years to buy it for her.”

“Steve,” she breathed, her vision blurring with tears she couldn’t hold back anymore, heart thumping wildly in her chest. He didn’t reply, just reached between them and curled his fingers around her hand to pull it into view.

“I used to wear it on my dog tags,” he continued, sliding it carefully onto her finger. It fit perfectly. “That’s the only reason I still have it. Otherwise it would have been lost after I went into the ice.”

“Steve, I…I can’t accept this,” Natasha said finally, unable to tear her eyes away from the band on her finger. It was strange, to say the least, to see a ring there…but for some reason, it didn’t terrify her as much as she always thought it would.

“Why not?”

“ _Because_ ,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s the only thing you have left of her. I can’t take that from you.”

“You’re not.” He dropped her hand and brushed her hair back from her face. “She was the most important woman in my life, it makes sense that the other one has it too.”

“You are such a sap, Rogers,” Natasha replied, huffing out a laugh. His lips curved up into a small, hesitant smile.

“So…is that a yes?”

“I asked you first.”

“I gave _you_ the ring.”

“I still-“  
He cut her off by dipping his head down and pressing his lips hard against hers. Her words turned into a soft grunt of surprise in the back of her throat, but she recovered quickly and slid her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer. Finally, once her lungs were burning and she’d started feeling dizzy - both from the lack of oxygen and the way he was kissing her - he pulled away just enough for her to take a breath.

“I love you,” she mumbled against his lips, and she felt his curve up into a smile.

“That’s a yes,” he replied.

“I asked you first,” she repeated, and he kissed her again in response. He slid his hands down the length of her arm and rested on her hip, but when his fingertips slipped under her tank top, he let them brush against the exact spot one her side that made her practically squeal into mouth and jerk away from him.

“Say it,” he muttered lowly.

“No,” she replied defiantly, and he touched his fingers to her side again. This time she let out a high-pitched peal of laughter that would probably terrify anyone else who knew her. “ _Rogers!_ ”

“I can do this all day,” he said, shooting her a smirk at the dirty look she gave him.

“You underestimate the amount of torture I can withstand,” she panted, trying to twist herself away from him, but he had his entire weight on top of her, effectively keeping her in place. Still, he moved his hand away, letting it rest on her hip instead.

“Then give me the ring back.”

“No,” she said again, much too quickly. He started moving his hand again and she gasped. “Okay, _fine!_ Fine. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

“Good.”

Natasha reached up and pulled him towards him again, but stopped just as his lips brushed lightly against hers. “On one condition,” she mumbled against them.

“What’s that?”

“You’re changing your last name to Romanoff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i really just post a whole-ass fic at one time?
> 
> yes, i really did.
> 
> to be fair, it was _technically_ written as a one shot.
> 
> this fic was something i worked the most on while i was going through a period of several shitty days/weeks in a row, and it was something i ended up only going back to on days when i was in a really bad mood. i also used some of my own past experiences in my attempt to articulate what they were going through, because i feel like going through a horribly devastating breakup is something you only truly understand when you've actually experienced it. mine in particular was almost five years ago but the memory of that feeling never really goes away. 
> 
> i know the topic of natasha and children is always a very complex and complicated considering who she is as a character (also complex), so i really hope i did it justice. i really just wanted her to get to that place of acceptance that it's not her fault and that it doesn't make her any lesser of a person, and simultaneously give her the support system she would never ask for but is there nonetheless. age of ultron didn't actually happen in this little version of the universe, but i kinda took some inspiration from her complicated feelings and the context that could have been in that movie had they, like...tried. 
> 
> my point in saying all of this is that i just...wanted natasha to realize how much she was loved, and i wanted her to be able to accept herself despite her flaws...to realize where her home was and that she doesn't have to keep running away from it. that even if she's never really able to truly move on and leave her past behind her, she still has a place in the world where she can be happy and people who care about her that will help her work through it and not feel so alone.
> 
> anyway, i'll stop rambling. i was just a bit apprehensive to post this for the longest time but i just love natasha romanoff and want her to be happy okay
> 
> thank you so much for reading <3
> 
> and, before anyone asks, yes i'm still working on the tightly tangled web series. only seventy more days until black widow ;)


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